Ukraine War Day #340: Earning Redemption With Blood

Letter from Raskolnikov to Sonya:  My dearest Sonya, I had an odd experience today in my Siberian labor colony.  A very odd-looking man, head shaped exactly like an upside-down egg, approached me and offered me a full commutation of my sentence, if I agree to fight in his private army of mercenaries in the ongoing Crimean War, which is taking place even as we speak.  This would be a 6-month contract.

Letter from Sonya to Raskolnikov:  Dear Rodion, sounds like a sweet deal for a double homicide.  My advice:  Take the deal.

Raskolnikov:  But what if I get killed in battle?  I hear those English Light Hussars are maniacs, just crazy-brave on the battlefront, especially when charging our Cossack artillery battalions.

Sonya:  My darling, if you are killed, then I will mourn over your ashes.  But if you survive, then we can be together in under a year.  Take the deal.

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment [not really]

Dear Readers:

First order of business: As I promised my Loyal Readers, I have watched that 2-hour movie “The Best In Hell”, produced by Prigozhin and his crew. Quicky review: It’s really good, it should win the Oscar for Best Film. I like that it is also educational, as that Colonel Shopot explains the different types of weapons, artillery and tank systems used. For any War Geek, this movie is a must. If Prigozhin meant this as a “recruitment film,” I imagine he will get some takers. It didn’t work that way with me, though. Sort of had the opposite effect, to be honest…

The movie is gritty and realistic, but, being a hopeless romantic, I would have liked to see a bit more on the “love and redemption” side of things, à la Dostoevsky. For example, that episode where the Russian and Ukrainian (sorry, “White” and “Yellow”) soldiers reminisce about their grandfathers taking Berlin together, that could have been a heartwarming scene, and the two guys could have shaken hands and become good friends. But no, they call each other assholes, pull out their giant army knives and continue to slash each others throats egregiously. Well, I suppose that’s the way it is in real life, unfortunately, once men are filled with battle rage.

Zeks To The Front!

With that, I move on to this related human interest story, our heroes are not actors but actual real soldiers, Wagnerite “criminals”, recruited from Russia’s prison system to fight the war in Ukraine. The co-authors of this piece are Abbas Dzhuma and Vasilisa Nikolaeva. A quick language note: in Russian, the slang word for a jailbird is a zek, the word itself is an abbreviation of the word Заключённый (zakl’uchonny) meaning “incarcerated”.

We should note first that Westie/Ukrainian propaganda had a field day with this development. They want to portray these unusual recruits as ferocious criminals, (a) rapists and murderers set loose upon the Ukrainian people, in their spare time when they are not busy fulfilling their primary mission (b) as cannon fodder to toss into the maws of that awesome Ukrainian meatgrinder. And this cartoonish depiction notwithstanding the Ukrainian practice of also recruiting prisoners; not to mention jewelry thief Beau Geste and his gang of thugs from the French Foreign Legion.

Sonya: “Take the deal.”

Evgeny Prigozhin: “I offer you redemption and Christ’s forgiveness.”

Starting in the spring of 2022, we learned that Wagner founder Evgeny Prigozhin was touring the Russian prison network to recruit volunteers for the Special Military Operation. These zeks would serve in his private military company called Wagner. In September Prigozhin himself confirmed the rumors and speculations. He stated in a radio interview that his recruits were successfully fighting on the Bakhmut front. Rejecting the stereotypes of violent criminals thrust into the role of raw cannon fodder: “First of all, these are patriots, they will not allow their Motherland to be ashamed of them. Secondly, they are professionals, and many of them have a lot of military experience. And lastly, those people who feel squeamish about sending prisoners to the front, well then, send your own children.”

This past December, the first tranche of zeks, now ex-zeks returned from the front, free men, all their sins forgiven, after they had finished serving out their 6-month contract. “With medals, money, and a pardon,” as Wagner bragged proudly. And in January the second group returned home.

In the interviews below, all the names have been changed (by the reporters) to protect the guilty.

Dmitry Semyonov

“Now I am a free man, but my wife still has to serve 11 years.” In the spring of 2022 Dmitry was offered a choice: 180 days in the meat grinder versus 12 years sitting out his sentence. He made the right choice. His call sign was “Kurva“, which is army lingo for “The Recon Commander is working with accuracy”. People who speak Polish think of something else; apparently this is a really bad word in Polish.

Ex-zek “Kurva”. (Why bother to alter his name if you go ahead and show his face??)

Kurva: “My wife won’t get out until 2034. She was supposed to get out one year before me. I did this for her, to be honest. Now I’m going to see if I can get her out earlier as well. I’ll try anything for her.”

Kurva was a veterinarian from a family of veterinarians. And although he stopped practicing this trade long ago, he still tinkers with inventions of prostheses for cats and dogs. He and his spouse, in their real job, engaged in concocting and selling psychotropic substances in rather large quantities. In 2018 the court sentenced him to 17 years, and the wife to 16. [yalensis: Russia has really strict drug laws. This is how they were able to nail Brittney Griner. I will keep my opinions to myself, on both issues, for now.]

“It’s been 5 years since I was home. Everything looks new and strange. I met up with old friends and classmates. People I studied with in college. I even met up with some people I knew in jail. This new world is very interesting to me.”

Reporters: How did army service affect you, serving in the very forge of the special operation, out on the front lines?

Kurva: It changed my soul. I am a completely different person now. I am more organized, more responsible, more honorable. Prior to prison colony, I was just Dima the carefree crook. In the colony I was reborn as Dmitry, because I was already starting to change. And then the SMO, the discipline, the regime, all of that continued to change me even more. Do you know how we address each other on the front? “Brother”. We become brothers in blood, brothers in arms. We were given identical uniforms, and we became parts of a single whole. There, it doesn’t matter, who volunteered, and who was recruited from the colony. Honestly speaking, at times it was more interesting to fight alongside fellow zeks, because they have that fire in them, that élan, they are purging themselves with blood, which gives them a chance for redemption. I have some wounds. Both bullet wounds and from shell fragments. But the fact that I am sitting here talking to you, is proof that I was not just cannon fodder.

Summer of 2022: Wagnerites liberate the Ugledar Electric Power Station.

We fought near Bakhmut. We took the Ugledar Power Station. The fighting got more and more complicated. Otradnoe. Nikolaevka. We marched and marched, fighting for every meter of land. The last battle I fought in, was the most difficult of all. They had given us the task of taking a fortified position. Where 40 regular Ukrainian soldiers and 6 from the Aidar Battalion were waiting for us, along with 2 large-calibre machine guns. We snuck through their lines in the middle of the night and conducted a true Bartholomew’s Day massacre. I was wounded in the fray, but it was still a lot of fun. The Ukrainians simply didn’t expect such audacity from us, when just four of us approached their sleeping troops. We took 8 prisoners and even one Aidar, those are the guys who claim they never allow themselves to be taken prisoner.

As for us: We never retreat. It’s always just Forward, Forward. All it took was 50 zeks to take 100 Ukrainian prisoners. Some people say we are working out an “amnesty for blood”, but that’s not the way it is. This is our choice. We always had a choice: You can stay, or you can go. We even designed an emblem for ourselves, our motto is “All or Nothing!”

“Were you given any training?”

Kurva: Yes, and very good training. Instructors who were former Special Ops guys, worked us really hard. But we liked it. A feeling of discipline, and even super-discipline, was born within us. The labor colony has its own sort of discipline, of course. But this is different, this is military discipline. We got the best weapons, the best equipment, and we were allowed to take trophy equipment.

“They gave you your 100 grams of rum?”

Kurva: No! No drugs or alcohol allowed whatsoever. And we were strictly forbidden to commit any violence or coercion against the peaceful civilian population. They watched us very closely in this regard. Just courage and élan, that’s all they needed from us! Life or death. It was like dancing on the edge of a blade.

“Were you afraid?”

Kurva: Of course. Fear is always there, and it needs to be there. Fear is your friend. If you lose it, that’s a bad thing. Fear helps you sense when there is danger. It whispers to you: “Don’t go there.” So you hold back, and boom! a shell hits that exact spot.

Soldiers of Aidar Battalion are ideologically motivated.

Kurva believes that the enemy should not be demeaned nor underestimated. He can philosophize on this topic for hours: “To under-estimate your opponent, that is the main danger for any soldier. If you say that he is weak, that means that we are weak too. If you say that he is strong, then we are strong as well, especially when we defeat him. It is necessary to have a rational estimate of his strength, and even to fear him at times. Although I have to say, that the regular Ukrainian army soldiers are weaklings, they run away from us and willingly surrender to us. But the Aidar guys, they are more interesting, they are better trained and ideologically motivated.”

“What are your further plans?”

Kurva: I plan to re-enlist in Wagner. I want to get better at my job, learn about new types of warfare, master new types of weapons. I am only 39, I still have my life ahead of me.

“So, your motivation has not flagged?”

Kurva: No, I still feel the fire inside me. And generally I find that here, in the peaceful world, people are always angry at something, always just focused on themselves. Out there, on the front lines, life is simpler, somehow. Or maybe I just haven’t got used to being among ordinary people again. Maybe I just need to become more adapted to normal life? I have only been home for 6 days, my eyes have not accustomed to the sights. Of course, the pretty girls, the sight of flowers, the supermarkets, all of this is very appealing to my eyes. And yet, over there it’s better somehow…

Next: We hear the experiences of a different zek, Andrei.

[to be continued]

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