Russia is doing its utmost to prevent the investigation of war crimes committed by its troops and Russian mercenaries.
Information on war crimes committed by Russian troops around the world is constantly updated with new cases. Horrific crimes committed by the Russians in Ukraine have already been recognized as more terrible than the atrocities by Hitler’s Gestapo in WWII: burning out the eyes, amputation, mass rapes and extrajudicial killings. In besieged Mariupol, amid humanitarian disaster, the Russians have set up mobile crematoriums where evidence of war crimes is burned. Humanitarian workers who were dealing with Mariupol refugees, claim the Russians remove the internal organs of the people in the city for further transplantation. These organs are then sent to Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don.
Russia has already practiced removing the organs during the Chechen war, for example. Questions remain regarding the fate of the people forcibly moved to Russia after it invaded Ukraine.
But cases similar to ‘Bucha massacre’ can be seen in different areas where Russian troops are present.
A gang of Russian mercenaries is involved in the massacre of civilians in Mali. They executed more than 300 people. That is the worst massacre in this country for 10 years of conflict.
However, for more than a week, the UN has been demanding access to the area to investigate under its Security Council mandate, to no avail.
Russia has blocked a request put forward by France at the UN Security Council for “independent investigations” into the alleged massacre of several hundred civilians in Mali by the Malian army and Russian paramilitaries, diplomatic sources said on Saturday. Russia, supported by China, “didn’t see the need” for the text and considered it “premature,” given that an investigation has been opened by the Malian authorities.
Mali’s army announced on 1 April that it had killed 203 “militants” in Moura, in central Mali, during an operation in late March. However, that announcement followed widely shared social media reports of a civilian massacre in the area. Human Rights Watch has alleged that Malian soldiers and foreign fighters executed 300 civilians there between 27 and 31 March.
As with the massacre in Ukraine, Moscow is seeking to present the facts on Russian war crimes as fake, as it pressures friendly regimes to question Russian responsibility.
After the WWII, some Russian soldiers and officers told that German women had been raped during the occupation of Berlin. The diary by Soviet Army officer Vladimir Gelfand, published in 2015, is just one piece of evidence. The book by journalist Martha Hillers “Woman in Berlin”, telling about the German women raped by Russian soldiers, was listed as extremist one in Russia.
Russian war crimes are a common thing, therefore. Alongside with anti-fascist claims, Russia is borrowing more and more features of the Third Reich repression and war machine. With President Putin primarily responsible for Russia’s war crimes, like Hitler was responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany, lots of war crimes are committed by ordinary Russian soldiers.
Their families approve of their actions, from looting to rape and extrajudicial killings, SIGINT suggests.
But the number of proven cases in Ukraine, Central African Republic, Libya, and Syria raises the question why the Russians are so cruel. An attempt to exploit the issue of Slavic unity and the center of the Slavic world, cultivated by Putin in Russia, is obviously a fake narrative to legalize the Kremlin’s encroachment on European territories. Modern Russia is not, in fact, the successor to the Slavic (European) ethnic group. It was composed of the Polovtsian and Pecheneg tribes, influenced by the Mongols in the 13th-16th centuries.
That was the Horde state that led to such Russian features as:
1. Making the governor sacred;
2. The state is more important than people. The people serve the governor and the empire. People serve the state, not vice versa.
3. There can be no rule of law, as the law cannot be stronger than the will of the governor.
4. There are no protected personal rights. Personal privileges are given by the governor and taken away by him.
5. Militarization is the process of turning the country into a militarized association.
6. The secret police enhance the role;
7. There is a super-idea, that should mobilize society.
The Horde basis of Russian society and governance explains why Moscow is so devastating in other countries. War and conquest are necessary for nomadic people to guarantee stable governance and obedient population.
That is why Russian society rejects any idea of democracy or humanitarian values. Serf psychology is dominant in Russian society.
They believe liberal reforms indicate the government is weak. That is why the government brutally suppressed any uprising, with slavery regime tightened. As the government deteriorates material and legal status of the people, that does not trigger the protests, but complaints against the governor, who creates unacceptable living conditions.
A serf slave descendant is outraged and even offended when there is not enough vodka or he cannot afford it. The role of vodka in Russian life is a strategic issue for any level of Russian government. Russian culture alone teaches that a person that doesn’t drink is sick. The need to drink vodka manipulates people into using any substance that contains alcohol, from perfume to shoe polish. There was an instruction, seized among other Russian documents during the fighting in Ukraine, signed by Russian soldiers, telling it was inadmissible to drink antifreeze instead of alcohol.
Most people believe it is normal to be drunk, as it compensates for the spiritual emptiness of depersonalized slaves. The mysterious Russian soul is in fact the result of endless introspection by Russians with pessimistic conclusions about the inner content and the recommendation to “squeeze a slave out of yourself drop by drop.” That fact does not allow, even in theory, to integrate Russians into Western civilization.
With slaves unable to organize themselves, one Russian is one slave, and many Russians are many slaves. That is why the Soviet Union broke up after internal upheaval by the elites, not a popular uprising. And that is why Russia has not made a single attempt to overthrow the Putin’s government. To function in society, a Russian needs a master (governor) who sends him to work, to war or to camps.
“Who allowed you to live so well?” – one of the inscriptions that Russian soldiers left in one of the houses in Ukraine, – a good example of their attitude.
Who allowed you to live so well?
Russians can organize themselves for a moment to get out the rage of accumulated humiliation. That practically finds outlet in violence.
Any Russian personality trait, that seems attractive at first sight, does not look like that, upon closer examination.
A Russian soldier, for example, is more afraid of the officer who stands behind him than of the enemy.
Emperor Napoleon, during his military campaign, noted the tactics by Russian commanders just to fill up enemy positions with a huge mountain of their own dead soldiers, with a possibility to repeat it. It is a known fact that Napoleon, as he started his invasion, handed out documents to the Russian peasants freeing them from serfdom. He was surprised to find out, however, it did not work, because the Russians did not need freedom.
The Russians cannot face living without a governor (of any level). That destroys their common values. They do not need freedom, and will fight to keep the status quo. That is the ‘mystery’ of Russian soul. That explains why even those Russians who have gone to the West cooperate with Russian intelligence for the Kremlin regime.
That is why we overestimated the effect by sanctions on Russia, as we expected Russians to drive an uprising, as things get worse.
The Russian governors made their people believe they are ‘chosen’, ‘superior’, ‘special’, should accomplish ‘liberation mission’, as they succeeded in manipulating their minds, launched wars of aggression, and reduced the risks for their regimes.
But it was clear even at a glance that reality is different from these products of imagination. Any attempt to criticize or point at that discrepancy, at the same time, just adds to the slavish hubris and boosts Russian chauvinism. False images and beliefs shaped the religion of the Russian serf state, as a crowd of slaves turned into a nation of slaves.
To maintain stability and power, the elites have always advocated for a system where they cultivated chauvinism to distract people from being dissatisfied with the government, as they gave them a chance to be proud and happy just because they are Russians.
A Russian person, considered disposable by the government, accustomed to everyday and moral dirt, was proud of his country, had a strong ego, envied and disliked everything non-Russian.
Much of Russian anti-American and anti-Western attitude stems from envy that it is not inherently Russian. It also triggers aggression against everything that is not Russian.
That stance is close to aggressive, ideologically organized nationalism directed against other peoples, that is, to fascism. This nature of the Russian ethnos determines social order for the type of governance the country needs.
We may conclude the government in Russia reflects the demands by Russian people, as regime change in the Kremlin is unlikely to modify Russia’s political course significantly. Russia might abandon the policy of aggression only if defragmented into ethnic and national entities, with their aspirations to sovereignty currently suppressed by the Kremlin.