Anna Neistat: "Same thing happened in Chechnya. For them, there were no peaceful residents. For them, any woman was sniper, and any man was terrorist."
Recently, the George and Amal Clooney Foundation for Justice sent three submissions to the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office asking them to investigate Russian crimes committed in Ukraine. The Foundation has been documenting Russia’s crimes since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
So when we talked to Anna Neistat, a lawyer and head of the Clooney Foundation's The Docket initiative, and Solomiya Stasiv, the programme's project coordinator in Ukraine, we talked about why they chose the prosecutor's office in this country, how international law allows for proving the involvement of Russian commanders in war crimes, and how many of them they established by collecting evidence; what the Yugoslavian and Rwandan tribunals did to eventually detain the main suspects. He also explains why the Russian military is killing civilians and how the war crimes in Chechnya are related to what is happening in Ukraine today.
"RUSSIAN SOLDIERS HELPED US A LOT, THEY OFTEN LEFT INSCRIPTIONS ON THE WALLS OF HOUSES"
- Why, having gathered evidence of a number of war crimes in Ukraine, did you hand it over to the German prosecutor's office?
A.N.: There are several main directions now, if we do not take into account the special tribunal for the crime of aggression, because it was not created to seek accountability for war crimes committed in Ukraine. Firstly, there is the International Criminal Court, which, as we understand it, will deal with the military and political leadership, because it has the authority to do so. That is, its priority will be Putin, Shoigu and other senior officials. Because neither the Ukrainian prosecutor's office nor any other can overcome the immunity that Putin has as president. When this will happen is another question. But knowing their past cases, we can say that they will probably have a dozen suspects.
On the other hand, there is the Ukrainian prosecutor's office and law enforcement agencies of your country, which are already investigating more than 100,000 criminal proceedings on war crimes. However, due to certain limitations of Ukrainian criminal law, they can only deal with perpetrators directly, and with commanders only if there is evidence of an order given. This is because Ukrainian criminal law does not contain such a thing as command responsibility, which is a concept in international law and in many other countries. This means that commanders are responsible not only when they gave the order, but also when, as defined by international law, they knew or should have known and did nothing to prevent the crime. In this situation, they also become responsible for the crimes committed.
This is a long-standing principle of international law, but it is not yet in the Criminal Code of Ukraine. There have been attempts to introduce this provision, but it is not yet in place, which means that despite the large number of criminal proceedings, it will be very difficult to prosecute cases against commanders. Therefore, in our work, we cover this intermediate category of mid- and senior-level commanders, against whom we file cases using the doctrine of command responsibility. Next, we can turn to prosecutors in countries that have the principle of universal jurisdiction. Most countries have it, but the problem is that many of them have significant restrictions.
For example, in France or Italy, we cannot submit such materials because there are certain requirements. For example, the suspect must already be in the country or the victims must be citizens of that country. France, for example, is currently conducting eight cases of war crimes committed in Ukraine, but all of these cases involve victims who are citizens of that country. For example, a French journalist who was killed in Ukraine.
Germany is one of the few countries with what is known as absolute universal jurisdiction. This means that there are no restrictions. If these are crimes against humanity or war crimes, then regardless of where they were committed, where the victim and the suspect are located, the German prosecutor's office can open such a case. There are other countries like Germany, but the fact that Germany has experience in investigating such cases also plays a role here. For example, Slovakia has a similar law. But Slovakia has never conducted such cases. And in Germany, the prosecutor's office has a special unit for investigating war crimes. And they have, as I said, experience. So it's a combination of the law, the cases that we think need to be prosecuted, and the choice of a country that already has experience in handling such cases.
In addition to these three cases, which we have now submitted to them, we have a number of cases that we continue to prepare and plan to file in other countries - Eastern European and outside Europe as well.
And one more important nuance. The Criminal Code of Ukraine does not provide for liability for crimes against humanity. And we try to build all our cases in broad categories, including crimes against humanity. For example, one of the cases we are filing is about people who found themselves under occupation in the Kyiv region. We ask that this case of persecution of civilians be investigated as a case of crimes against humanity. We are doing this because in several villages there are cases of rape, several cases of execution of people, cases of torture. And it is very difficult to link each case to a commander. And if you look at the fact that all these villages were occupied for many weeks, and during this time all this happened in different settlements, then they all fall under this crime. And then it is much easier to link this general crime to the commanders who were at the head of the units that participated in the occupation.
- Can you tell us more about how to link them? Because people who survived the occupation do not always understand which units of the Russian army were there, and they may not know who was the commander of a particular unit at the time. They didn't always identify themselves. How do you identify them and what evidence do you collect to prove their involvement in the crimes?
A.N.: Yes, it is difficult to establish this, which is why it took us so long to investigate, and most of this time was spent on determining which military units were located and where, and who was in command. Technically, this is how we do it. Part of it is witness testimony. It is clear that not everyone knows the names of the units, not everyone remembers the chevrons. But if you interview enough witnesses, some things begin to emerge. In addition, Russian soldiers helped us a lot, they often left inscriptions on the walls of houses. For example, "Vasya, 64th Brigade". We carefully photographed all this, collected photos taken by local residents after the liberation of these territories. Of course, this does not mean anything by itself.
But in those regions where the Russians were retreating quickly, they managed to leave a lot of things behind. For example, near Kharkiv, Solia and I went around all these places together and collected everything that was there. Even though we usually don't take anything from a crime scene, we mostly just take pictures, there was a lot of stuff that could be photographed. These documents range literally from a unit list to some much less obvious things, such as documents on refuelling vehicles, which often have a signature, a stamp, a surname or a unit number. Or they go to the bathhouse, for example. And there is a list of who goes there and when.
We also often come across small notes with names and phone numbers and nicknames on various social media. Sometimes we found them ourselves, and sometimes people just gave them to us. Some of the Russians lived in their house, then left, and left behind their uniforms, IDs, flash drives with photos, etc. They left us a lot of things as a "gift".
But it is clear that this is only the beginning of the work, because we are working a lot with specialists in the field of OSINT intelligence. And they spent many months connecting Vasya from the 64th Brigade with his commander. It is known that there is a lot of information about the commanders in open sources, but the biggest problem was to understand who was actually standing there and who was actually in command. And we saw some publications that somehow identified the commanders, but we were actually confused, because when you read "64th Brigade", it is logical to assume that the commander is from there. This is not the case. There were united groups of troops, which included the army, the FSB, and the Russian Guard. And this grouping could have had a completely different commander who had nothing to do with the 64th Brigade.
- It takes a lot of time and effort to find out all this. It's a huge amount of work...
A.N.: It took us a year and a half. But compared to other conflicts, other wars, many of which I have worked on, there is, of course, a lot of information here. Firstly, a lot of information was just left lying around, and we were here right away to collect and analyse it all. For example, we arrived in the Kharkiv region a few weeks after the liberation. When we worked in Syria and Sudan, years passed after the crimes we were documenting had been committed. Here, the fact that we had access to these materials helped a lot. In addition, there is now a huge amount of information in open sources. Our experts did a lot of work on social media, where Russian soldiers communicate. You can also get a lot of interesting things from there. Because they still don't understand that it's not difficult to track all this.
- But, apart from the inscription on the wall, this fictitious Vasya did not leave his photo. How can we identify him? Or is it captured on CCTV somewhere?
S.S.: And it is. They really leave a lot behind. They are really proud of their actions and the fact that they took part in the war. The psychological factor plays an important role here. And they are very proud of their actions and, fortunately, they leave a lot of evidence for us. But, as Anya said, this is really a very big piece of work that involved a lot of specialists and a lot of partners. We spent a lot of time trying to establish some structures that are not known to anyone. I think the Russians do not fully understand how their military structures work.
AN: In Kharkiv region, it was even more difficult, because there were still people mobilised from the so-called 'LPR' fighting there. Knowing only a few nicknames they used to call themselves, it was a challenge to establish what kind of unit it was and how it related to Russian troops.
SS: Regarding what you say about them not identifying themselves. It depended on how long the occupation lasted. Yes, there are places in the Kyiv region where it lasted for several weeks. And we notice some patterns, some interaction between the military who were based in the Kyiv region, where they hid their faces, names, call signs. I heard stories that when, for example, one of the soldiers called his colleague in the fighting a sergeant, he was severely beaten for it. That's why they hid more, or less. It all depends on the unit. But where the occupation lasted for months, they have already established a certain way of life. People already know faces, call signs, names, family stories. That is, the more we talk to witnesses of crimes, the more we learn that someone is a tanker from Rostov-on-Don who has a child, or something else. It all adds up to a puzzle.
- Did you first find out about the crime and go to collect evidence, or did you go to the liberated territories and just ask people what was happening there?
S.S.: It varies. For example, in the Kharkiv region, there were a few people with whom we planned to talk, but we went primarily to document, and during the course of your work, you often just cross paths with people who have experienced crimes or witnessed crimes. And it wraps you up in a kind of magical tangle, because one thing clings to another. We have had cases where people have come up to us in the street and said they want to add their testimony.
AN: We clearly explain to people who we are, what we do, and why we ask such questions. Especially when we see that this is a person whom we can involve in the case as a victim or as a witness, we not only explain, but also sign a special form with each person, which states who we are, what we do, how we can use the information that the person provides us with, whether we can share it with the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, with the International Criminal Court. The person gives his or her consent to this. Because without this, we cannot use this information.
As for the categories of cases, from the very beginning, when the full-scale Russian offensive began in February 2022, we understood that we would not be able to cover the vast. We are not engaged in general documentation of war crimes. From the very beginning, we had certain areas of focus. We continued to work on some of them and brought them to fruition, while others we stopped working on because others were working there. For example, at first we started to work on attacks on hospitals. But then there was a whole coalition of international and Ukrainian organisations that dealt with this. The main one is Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). We realised that they could do it without us.
And we knew for sure that we had to take at least one case of indiscriminate shelling, because it was happening all over the country. Especially with the use of X-22 missiles, which are very powerful but extremely inaccurate. When they are used, in many cases they result in a large number of casualties. So we took one particular shelling in Odesa region, but we are adding other facts to the case that we did not document directly. All the families we represent have suffered from this rocket attack. However, it is important for us to identify and bring to justice not only the pilot who pressed the button, but also those who set the targets. These are not the pilot or even the unit commander. They are determined at a completely different level. And so, to show that such attacks had been taking place regularly for months, that they resulted in heavy civilian casualties every time, regardless of whether there was a military target nearby or not, we added other facts. Because they proved that such rocket attacks always result in dozens of wounded and killed. And all this continues. For this reason, it was very important for us to show that this was not one single attack, but many.
The same is true for other cases. For example, in the Kyiv region case, we represent one victim who was detained and tortured, and the family of a man who was shot in a car. But at the same time, we include a large number of episodes in the case, because it was important for us to find out whether these were isolated cases or part of a policy of persecuting civilians during the occupation in this particular region. This is the basis of this case of crimes against humanity. I would add that although we do not represent all of these people directly, they can be added later as witnesses and victims.
After these cases have been submitted to the prosecutor's office, we continue to work on the case of torture. Because we see that in all the territories where the occupation has been and continues, this is a very common practice, and it is also a crime against humanity. There are a huge number of cases of torture. There is virtually no such thing as a person being detained and not being tortured to some extent. Almost all detainees have been through this to some extent. The only difference is that someone was beaten a little, and someone was tortured to death. And the main thing is that this is a classic Putin's Playbook, the way Russia has done it everywhere. In Chechnya, in Georgia, in Donbas in 2015, and so on. That is why we also hope to bring this case to the prosecutor's office.
We are trying to trace some patterns of crimes precisely to understand that there are so many of them that we have no way of handling all of them. The Ukrainian prosecutor's office is trying, but you understand that it will be very difficult to bring all these 100,000 cases to a logical conclusion, so we try to take cases that we can link to specific commanders. Even if we have a hundred different episodes, the main suspect will not be just one, there will be a dozen of them. We can't chase every soldier who tortured or pulled the trigger, that's for the Ukrainian prosecutor's office to do. As for the commanders, it is important for us to identify as many of them as possible.
- In a specific case, do you talk to European prosecutors only about the responsibility of the commander or will they investigate the activities of all those to whom he gave these orders?
AN: In some situations, when we know them, we name specific perpetrators. But, again, it is unrealistic to find the specific perpetrators of the arson of every house or the entire crew of a tank or armoured personnel carrier that was there robbing people, given our resources, so we mostly focus on commanders.
"IN OUR CASES, WE ARE VERY ACTIVE IN USING THE STATEMENTS OF RUSSIAN PROPAGANDISTS"
- Let's imagine that you have identified the commander. What's next? If he did not give specific orders to torture, rape, or kill people, how can you prove a causal link?
AN: That is why I started our conversation with team responsibility. We don't need a written or verbal order. We just need to prove that this person was the commander of the unit that was in this village and in this community at that moment. And that all these crimes were committed under his supervision. It is very difficult to prove that he was aware of any one particular rape that took place in a neighbouring village. It is almost impossible. But it is possible to prove that all of this happened over a period of weeks and that he was watching it all.
This is the difference between the need to prove an order and the need to prove the fact that he knew or should have known. That is why we actively use the work of journalists in our cases. We show that while all this was happening, journalists were writing about it. That is, it all happened, it was all talked about publicly.
In addition, the testimony of these commanders' subordinates will be very important. And here, the connection between the German prosecutor's office and the Ukrainian one is very important to us. The Ukrainian prosecutor's office is aware of our cases, and we have been actively cooperating with them in this area. But we hope that among the hundreds of Russian servicemen who are currently under investigation in Ukraine or in captivity, there are those who can testify against the commanders.
In addition, we are sending inquiries to the Russian military prosecutor's office regarding these cases. We say, "You know, this happened. Are you investigating?"
- Do they answer anything?
AN: Nothing. But this letter is another proof that they were notified. Even if they didn't hear anything, didn't know, or were sleeping in the bunker all this time.
Of course, they receive such requests not only from us. Many organisations do this. It is a common practice. But this is also something that allows us to show that they knew about it. And, finally, in our cases, we very actively use the statements of Russian propagandists. This helps us to show that what happened in these places, what happened in these categories of crimes, was part of the deliberate policy of the aggressor state and its government. For crimes against humanity, this is a very important factor. That it is not just done spontaneously, but as part of a policy pursued by the state. As a rule, this is the most difficult part of the proof. But here we are greatly assisted by Russian propagandists, who tell us directly from the screens what exactly, how and with whom, and why it should be done or has already been done.
- They could have at least written something formal from the prosecutor's office in response.
SS: No, they only put me on the list.
A.N.: They have just written about a draft law that we believe directly concerns us. They must have found out about our cases. But it's not that we were hiding it too much...
- What exactly did they write?
S.S.: Assistance to organisations that collect evidence of crimes allegedly committed by Russian military personnel without Russia's knowledge or participation is proposed to be qualified as a criminal offence.
А. Н: They literally said what we do falls squarely under the article they are proposing.
I think they don't really understand how serious it is. They think that no one will ever get to them. That they will continue to walk this earth. But sooner or later, what the International Criminal Court is doing, what the Ukrainian prosecutor's office is doing, what we are doing - all this will turn into a very specific arrest warrant, and of course there are no guarantees, but it is not at all impossible that their trips to Turkey, the Emirates or somewhere else, depending on the political balance of power, will end. I'm not saying what if something changes in Russia itself. But let me remind you that under the Yugoslav Tribunal, none of those who had warrants issued for them escaped responsibility. Some of them died, some of them committed suicide, but all of them were caught.
- On the other hand, Anna, you have been documenting war crimes for more than 20 years and you know what the Russians did in Chechnya. Have any of them been held accountable?
A.N.: And no one caught them. I will keep repeating that what happened last February was a direct result of the fact that the Russians escaped responsibility for all their past crimes. There were a few cases in Russia a long time ago, there were a few cases in Europe against Kadyrov's men, but nothing close to what is happening now. As for Georgia, there was a little bit of both sides, the International Criminal Court has opened a case, but it is not clear how it will end. The first arrest warrants have been issued, but for Ossetian officials. Where are the Russian commanders? Or let's take Syria. Everything was known there. Or Crimea, Donbas. I was here in 2014-2015, and there was also documentation.
But still, I want to emphasise that what we saw in the first months after the full-scale invasion cannot be compared to anything I have seen in more than 20 years of this activity. When both the International Criminal Court and 12 countries at that time instantly opened investigations, and we finally heard from Western politicians what we should have heard 20 years ago. Everyone suddenly understood everything about Russia. Supposedly, 20 years ago, when they levelled Grozny to the ground, it was no longer clear. Somehow everyone woke up a little bit. And I believe that we need to start acting before they all go back to sleep. That's why we want to make sure that the processes in these cases are covered in the media as much as possible. Although we usually do not make statements, reports, or issue press releases for no reason. But this is very important to us, particularly because 1.5 years have passed, all investigations have been launched, but so far there have been few tangible results. We hope that this will have an impact. After all, we are putting specific cases on their desk.
- Unfortunately, we now realise that Interpol is in no hurry to put suspects in such cases on the wanted list. Therefore, the question is not only what evidence our law enforcement officers will collect and how quickly they will identify all those involved, but also when they will be in the dock. What do you consider to be the tangible results?
AN: From a realistic perspective, these are closed arrest warrants. Because open ones are good from a symbolic point of view, but not the most convenient from a practical point of view. Indeed, with Interpol, things are not so simple; with Europol, everything is much more straightforward. Of course, it includes only European countries. The likelihood of them travelling to EU countries is not very high at the moment, but on the other hand, I assure you that in a few years we will see them in Prague or somewhere else. I have no doubt about it. I am speaking from the experience of previous conflicts in which Russia has been involved.
In addition, representatives of a number of other non-European countries are sitting in Europol. But they are actually sitting in the same building. So when such a warrant is issued, it is also forwarded to the relevant countries and missions. Then everything will depend on the political will. But if, for example, we take Turkey, Serbia or some other countries with which Russia has volatile relations, and they go there, it all depends on the fluctuations in the political course at that moment. And if it is not in Russia's favour, and there is an arrest warrant, then the person can actually be detained and extradited.
The saddest thing that can happen is that this aforementioned Vasya Ivanov went, relatively speaking, to Turkey on holiday to rest with his family. And there is no case and no warrant. And then no one would issue it for nothing. Moreover, such a situation has already happened in Turkey, when they tried to extradite one of the Russian commanders who was there, and could not, because there was no specific case. That is why we are now trying to create as many cases as possible against as many commanders as possible. We want to have as many arrest warrants as possible in the world, in the hope that this network will sooner or later start to ferret them out.
It is clear that we do not have idealistic notions that a warrant will be issued and everyone will rush to catch up. There is nothing like that. On the other hand, if there are no warrants, the opposite will happen. They will come on their own, and there will be no reason to detain them.
It is also important to understand that these people need to be tracked. I am currently trying to find out whether anyone is systematically tracking the movements of these people, where their children are studying, where they go for medical treatment. This is what allowed the Yugoslavian and Rwandan tribunals to eventually apprehend the main suspects. All these small social connections. Someone has to deal with this systematically.
- Who exactly?
AN: I don't know. I have a feeling that no one is doing this at the moment. The thing is that the International Criminal Court has a department that deals with tracing in theory. But if I understand correctly, it has very limited powers. I'm not going to lie here, because I don't know how it works. But from what I know, it is very small and has fewer powers than the same department attached to the Yugoslavian Tribunal. Besides, there are structures in the world that could do this. For example, the Yugoslav attackers were not always caught by the same department, it was often some kind of international joint operation of several countries. But someone has to coordinate this process. And now I'm trying to ask all our colleagues who are involved in international structures around the Ukrainian project to investigate crimes and bring perpetrators to justice an important question: how will we catch them?
S.S.: It's very important to understand that phasing is very important here. We talk about a lot of things that are actually theories. Yes, there are cases when criminals were detained, but it took a long time. Moreover, the attention to Ukraine is unprecedented, and we have never seen before the extent of international support and the willingness of our domestic authorities to work, because the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, like many other law enforcement agencies, does a very huge piece of work. And we all know that we didn't have the right reforms and we didn't have the right structure that was ready for this, even though we were in the war for eight years before the full-scale invasion. However, these procedural things were not in place. In particular, the command responsibility that Anya talks about. If I'm not mistaken, NGOs started pushing for the Ukrainian draft law amending the Criminal Code in 2021. A lot of things don't happen on time. And I think we should all talk about it.
"WHAT WE SEE IN ALL THESE SITUATIONS, STARTING WITH CHECHNYA, IS ABSOLUTE TOTAL INDIFFERENCE TO THE SAFETY OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION"
- When you collect evidence, it is done, in legal terms, in a non-procedural way. Won't this lead to the fact that they will not be recognised in court, and this will effectively "bury" them?
AN: It all depends on the jurisdiction. We collect evidence, I would say, according to the average international requirements. In international law, there is a concept that means you need to know who picked up the piece of paper, who handed it over to, and where it was stored. For example, we found a document with a signature and a phone number. We just found it and handed it over. But if this document comes up in court three years later and nothing is known about it, it can, as you rightly say, be thrown away immediately. Because no prosecutor, no judge will attach it to the case.
In order to attach such a document to the case, a special form is attached to it, which states that "I, so-and-so, picked up the document there and then, under such and such circumstances". This is a form of acceptance of evidence. It is more or less standard. The US and the UK have stricter requirements. That is why it is left to the judge's discretion.
S.S.: Yes, this is not a procedural way of collecting evidence according to the Ukrainian CPC. But we still have processes that we are trying to explain. This is not a disorderly collection.
In turn, if we work with organisations, partners, and teams that are engaged in open-source investigations, they have their own established methodologies that have already been used in international courts. These are well-known organisations. So, accordingly, we rely on very different evidence. Physical evidence is only one small part of it. As Anya has already said, we communicate with a large number of victims, witnesses, etc. This, in turn, is also a large element of the evidence base.
AN: The main lawyer in these cases is a German lawyer. She checks all the documents for compliance with certain requirements. She has extensive experience in handling such cases.
Do you know what is very important to us? The fact that people want to seek justice. And they intuitively understand that this is what we need to do.
A few weeks ago, we called each of them to ask them to sign a power of attorney to allow us to represent them. Many of them had last spoken to us a year ago.
Their reaction was wonderful. No one said, 'What are you talking about, we've forgotten everything, leave us alone. On the contrary, they were happy that all these cases were being transferred to the German prosecutor's office. They believe and trust us.
And when the German lawyer explained to them that they had to understand that this was not a one-day process, it could take months, if not years, they all said they were ready for it and would be with us until the end.
It is very important for us that they remain the driving force behind these cases. We only do secondary work. This is possible only if people want it, are ready to seek justice and understand that it will not return their son, health or home, but it has its own value. In this sense, we are a mechanism for implementation.
We can give them suggestions and discuss with them how we will do it, under what article, in which country, etc. Justice can only be achieved if people want it. All these statements are on behalf of specific people, specific families against specific criminals.
SS: The people we work with have chosen this form of justice for themselves. As Ukrainians, we understand that there are many forms of justice that Ukrainians see. This is just one of them. There are different stories, different people, but all the victims we work with are committed to judicial justice and the responsibility of those responsible in the dock.
- How many victims do you represent in these three cases?
S.S.: We represent 16 people in three different cases. One of them concerns a rocket attack on civilian targets in Odesa region, where there were many injured and dead. We represent 11 victims in this case. In the Kharkiv region, it is a case of torture, illegal detention and executions. There we represent the families of three of the four executed people. And the third case concerns the Kyiv region - it's about what Anya said. We represent the family of a murdered man and a man who survived torture and deprivation of liberty.
- Can you tell us who among the Russian military was identified in the process of documenting these crimes?
AN: No, we can't. We discussed this issue and decided to ask for closed arrest warrants so that those against whom they were issued would not know about it. In total, these are 21 senior and mid-level commanders.
- Anna, you have been documenting crimes committed by the Russian military for many years. Do these crimes repeat themselves?
AN: The answer is yes. Of course, we see a lot of repetition. Although there are, of course, some nuances.
But what we see in all of these situations, starting with Chechnya, is an absolute indifference to the safety of the civilian population. Even if there is a military target, the choice of the method of attack, the moment of defeat, completely contrary to international law, does not take into account what is happening around. Even when we are not talking about carpet bombing a village, as we saw in Chechnya. In Ukraine, we have seen few such cases. Mariupol will probably be one of the brightest exceptions. At least in our cases, these are relatively targeted attacks. But they result in a large number of civilian casualties.
Contrary to what the law and morality of modern warfare requires, this absolute indifference to life, I think, is a red thread. And this indifference to the lives of their soldiers is evident in the way the Soviet Union fought, and in the way Russia fights. Western analysts have talked about this, and Churchill drew attention to it. That is, it is about the attitude towards the lives of its citizens, not just the citizens of the country against which the aggression is being carried out.
The second point - illegal detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and executions - is absolutely on the mark. Suffice it to recall the so-called "mopping up operations" in Chechnya. When they come to a village, they go from house to house, taking most of the men and young people. Half of them do not return, half return beaten. For those who did not return, no one knows where they are for months. A few more are found shot dead in a ravine somewhere. We saw this absolutely everywhere. Especially if the Russians stayed for any length of time.
In Georgia, the situation was a little bit different because the conflict was short. But in Tskhinvali, in the basement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they kept people for weeks, tortured them. There were also executions.
Russian troops were less involved in the war in Syria, but many of those who fought there were trained in Russian military structures. So there is also a lot in common.
Of course, there are differences. Still, what we are dealing with here is the very fact of aggression. An aggressive war against another state is a new page even in the history of Russian crimes. Still, Chechnya was different. It was the territory of the Russian Federation and formally remains so. Syria was a classic proxy war. In Georgia, it was not such an unambiguous fact of aggression. At least the first part of it, when the shelling of Tskhinvali began. There were nuances everywhere. There are no nuances here. There was no pretence in what happened in February. And this is a rather unique case in the 21st century.
But let me get back to the main point. The unifying thread of all these situations is complete impunity. In my understanding, what happened last February is directly related to the fact that no one was held accountable for what happened in Grozny in 1999.
- Do the military receive orders to kill civilians? Or do they have their own motives?
SS: It's more speculative about orders, because it's very difficult to prove. There are such cases. Because, as Anya said, life has no value for them.
We had conversations on this topic with people who work in different fields. Some may say that the Russian military likes to torture, to exert some kind of psychological pressure, to show off. But we had cases when we talked to victims, and they said that Russian soldiers directly voiced their intentions to destroy the language, the nation, etc. I wouldn't call them regular so far - they are rather isolated stories, but they did happen.
We are not asking these questions too deeply at the moment, as the topic of genocide is very sensitive from a legal point of view.
AN: Whenever we can, we ask people this question: "What did they say, how did they explain it?"
The answers are actually different, but they have something in common. You ask if they have orders to kill civilians. No, they don't. They have orders to kill fascists, nationalists, etc. This requires brainwashing, which is put in place at a high level. The same thing happened in Chechnya. For them, there were no civilians. For them, any woman was a sniper and any man was a terrorist. I won't speculate, but alcohol and drugs are also involved. It's hard to just leave any person not to defend their home, but to go somewhere else. Especially in non-elite units, whose soldiers committed most of the crimes. It seems to me that there were no people for them. There is a complete depopulation of the enemy. It can be traced.
S.S.: It is also important to consider who we are talking about. That is, there are Russian soldiers, many of whom are saturated with propaganda, and they do everything purposefully. There is a percentage of those who conditionally "knew nothing", "we were taken to the exercises", and there are soldiers of the so-called "LPR" and "DPR". This is a slightly different story. Because from what we document and the patterns of behaviour we see, they come with absolute purpose. They come with lists, they know where to look. They go to schools and kindergartens. And as a country that has been at war for nine years, we have boards of honour for ATO veterans. But they come not only to the military, but also to those who speak Ukrainian and those who do not, but who manifest their pro-Ukrainian position in any form. Therefore, everyone has their own motives, and many of them really come with absolute voracious cruelty. And they show it often.
AN: When we were working in the Kyiv region, where there are quite rich villages, cottage towns, I'll say it in non-legal language. It seems to me that they were simply blown away by what they saw. People told us that they asked: "Is this a village? How can this be a village?" They said: "Yes, it is a village." They: "No, it's a city over there."
So when my foreign colleagues ask me, "Why did they take out the toilets?", I try to explain that people came from places where they had never seen them. It's true! They have a point in their yard. I don't want to say this in a derogatory way to the Russian population, but again, this is what the witnesses say. There are several toilets on the plot, and they defecate in the living room. And this is not hatred on national or patriotic grounds, this is class or social hatred. Hence, in my opinion, the unjustified cruelty that results in shooting a dog and setting fire to a house. This has nothing to do with the lists of veterans or the pro-Ukrainian position.
But I must also say that witnesses told me about situations when the Russian military behaved decently and looked at everything around them with surprise. They said that they were told that you are all terrorists here, and you are normal people. But not often. That's why I want to bring cases against propagandists to court, because their role in what happened and is happening on this scale is still not well appreciated. Neither socially nor legally. These are the people whose mothers watched TV and whose commanders put in a zombie box. Because it can't just come out of nowhere. You need to hear it from someone, and hear it 25 times, so that it penetrates your brain. And you have to hear it the way Solovyov says it. It has to be the kind of Goebbelsian propaganda that has nothing to do with reality. But which is remembered forever.
I believe that this cannot be avoided if we are talking about global responsibility for what is happening.
Tatiana Bodnia, Censor.NET
