This weekend brought the Washington Post a horrible story about a Ukrainian woman, Alla, who was tortured, raped, humiliated in the most horrible ways during the Russian occupation of Izum. Her husband was also tortured for days. She scribbled these words on a wall, hoping that later her son would understand what had happened: “Alla. Electric shock. Undress. Painful.’
Violence cult
Where does the abhorrent, systematic and widespread violence used by Russian occupiers against Ukrainians come from? Studying history can help, but the banal reality is that the cult of violence is and was an essential part of Putin’s Russia: lawlessness that allows authorities to take their sadism on civilians.
Some examples from a long series. Sharp in my mind is the image of Mardiros Demertsjan, who, surrounded by his children and, because of his injuries, lying half upright on the veranda of his house in the summer of 2013 told me what happened to him when he was tackled by the police when he continued to insist that his boss be paid for his work. He worked on the facilities for the Sochi Winter Games (you know, the King’s beer).
Many of his colleagues were immigrants who went bankrupt after default, but Mardiros demanded his money. He was falsely accused of stealing copper wire and then the officers were able to let go. When the regular beating didn’t work, they got the crowbar out of the stable. “They bent me over, head to the floor, lowered my shorts and brought in the crowbar from behind. I screamed.’ The police station where this happened had a view of the glittering Olympic complex.
wachid
Two years earlier, I spoke to Wachid Gusenov, an Azeri who had lived in Russia for a long time, and greeted me in his orange football shirt. He said he was a big Ajax fan. Wachid lived in Stoepino, a town about 100 kilometers from Moscow where Campina and Mars were located. His nightmare started when three officers asked him about his papers and he referred to his rights under the Russian constitution. That made her angry. “You want to show how smart you are or something?” He had to go to the office.
Wachid was led to Major Babkin’s room. Two officers were there. Babkin took a baseball bat from his closet and began beating Wachid on the legs and arms. A quote from Wachid’s story: “He knocked me unconscious. When I came to, I realized that my arm was broken. I was covered in blood. Comrade Major, you broke my arm, I said. Then Babkin dropped the baseball bat and grabbed a chair. He played with me. He pretended to hit me and I raised my arm. When I lowered the arm, he hit me on the head with that chair. Those two cops just sat there like they were watching a movie.’
And this is just the police. The cult of prison violence is, if anything, even more brutal. And what is happening there is nothing compared to the work of Putin’s secret services, which also operate in Ukraine. The FSB is the champion of systematic ill-treatment and torture. As a correspondent, I traveled regularly to the Russian Caucasus where FSB agents (and not just them) operated a well-oiled ‘torture line’.
Many Russians were grateful to Putin for driving anarchy, lawlessness and violence from the streets. But they did not disappear, they became state property. Putin’s Russia has always consisted of this dual reality, and if you were lucky you hardly noticed it.
Thread
So yes, there is a common thread from Mardiros and Wachid to Alla and her husband: a sick cult of violence that you can indulge in on defenseless people. Whether in Russia or outside Russia. You also recognize it in Russian warfare, which is always characterized by the deliberate terrorizing and killing of civilians.
But on one point Ukraine is special – and that is the scale and the genocidal nature of the Russian attack. The frequent denial of Ukrainian identity by politicians and propagandists has, with the Nazi label, opened the door to turbo sadism. “We’ll knock the Ukrainian out of you,” Alla was told. “Either you accept the rules and acknowledge that you are now living in Russia or you will go missing. And no one will ever find you.’
Arnout Brouwers is a historian and editor of de Volkskrant. He writes an exchange column with Heleen Mees every other week.