Lies in important-looking envelopes...

In early April last year, an article by a certain Timofey Sergeytsev appeared on the Russian state information resource RIA Novosti. It has not yet been removed, it hangs there at this link: https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html, although the best proof of the genocide planned by the Russian leadership can hardly be found. The plans voiced in it are not destined to come true. And therefore, Ukrainians, if they are interested to know what was in store for them, should refer to the reports of human rights activists on the second Russian-Chechen war. The war, strictly legally unfinished, spilled over first into the Russian regions adjacent to Chechnya, continued in Syria and now flared up with renewed vigor in the vastness of Ukraine ...

An article on RIA Novosti, for example, says that Ukrainians who take up arms “should be destroyed on the battlefield as much as possible” and that no distinction should be made between the military personnel of the Ukrainian army and the militias from the territorial defense. But "a significant part of the masses of the people is also guilty." Timofei Sergeytsev labeled the majority of Ukrainians as "passive Nazis" and "accomplices of Nazism." If we put it on the basis of the Russian-Chechen war, then this is a copy of the "accomplices of the terrorists." Using this wording, Russian power structures abducted tens of thousands of residents of Chechnya outside of combat situations. Many of them were killed, some of them were convicted on fabricated criminal cases after torture and are kept to this day in prisons and colonies. Only a small part of the captured managed to escape from the hands of the alleged law enforcement officers. Often for money. Another 5-7 thousand are listed as missing. And this is despite the population of the Chechen Republic at the time of active hostilities at the beginning of the 2000s, approximately 700-800 thousand people.

But no figures can convey the pangs of despair through which the relatives of the abducted were put through, the lies and hypocrisy, all that they had to listen to and endure over the many years of searching. What the “popular masses” went through in the process of “denazification” of Chechnya in the Russian way is best seen in concrete examples.

In the electronic database of the Documentation Center. Natalia Estemirova at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee describes the story of the illegal detention and subsequent disappearance of Yusup Mezhiev, a 29-year-old resident of the village of Starye Atagi. On June 23, 2002, he left for Grozny in the morning. A separate company of the escort service, where he worked with the rank of foreman, was stationed there. But at the Russian post at the entrance to the city he was detained. The masked armed men, referred to in the criminal case file as “unknown FSB officers”, stated that some circumstances related to him needed to be clarified and put a bag over his head. People passing through the checkpoint later said that Yusup Mezhiev was put into a UAZ car and taken away towards the center of Grozny. As it turned out, to the military commandant's office. One of the local residents saw him there in handcuffs and informed the village. But the officers of the commandant's office “reassured” the relatives who arrived: Yusup Mezhiev was not brought to them and they, they say, know nothing about his detention.

For more than ten years, the Russian authorities have been busy with nothing but creating the appearance of investigating this incident. Relatives' requests and statements were answered promptly, within the time limits stipulated by the procedural code, informed about the resumption of the case, and again, strictly in accordance with the law, they informed about its suspension. The game of ping-pong went on for weeks, which then turned into months, and months into years, without any significant result in clarifying the further fate of a Russian police officer detained in front of witnesses at an official Russian post. Let him be a Chechen by nationality, but his own for numerous investigators, prosecutors, and only them - the entire vertical of Russian power, from the occupation, republican, and ending with federal officials in the highest Moscow and even the Kremlin offices. Relatives appealed to all authorities available to them, tolled all the bells, but did not wait for an answer to their simple questions: why was Yusup Mezhiev detained that day and where were they taken to?

At the same time, the same investigators almost did not refuse to conduct additional investigative actions.

- Do you want the military men who were on duty to be interrogated again? Yes, easily - no problem!

And then, after the time allotted for this by law, official letters were sent to Starye Atagi in envelopes with stamps and bold stamps on both sides: those on duty at the post were interviewed, the abductors did not know them, and where they took Yusup Mezhiev, they do not know.

- Do you want to listen to the witnesses of the detention again? Necessary business, not difficult, but what if they say something new to speed up the investigation? ..
And again, important-looking and worthless answers came to the relatives' home address: there is nothing significant in the testimony of witnesses, and therefore, unfortunately, there are no grounds for resuming the investigation either.

The investigation in the framework of the criminal case on the abduction of Yusup Mezhiev was suspended for the first time in September 2003. Reason: the inability to identify the criminals. The relatives protested this decision, and the investigation was reopened a few months later. Subsequently, it was suspended every three months: two months, as it were, an investigation, then suspension due to the lack of new data, then a protest from relatives to supervisory authorities, and again an official imitation of a two-long investigation - day in and day out! - months.

The pulling of veins from the relatives of the abducted person lasted until January 2011, when they, in despair, decided to go to court with a complaint about the inaction of the prosecutor's office. But the court also continued the game of evading criminals, who, if desired, could be identified immediately and in no time. He dismissed the complaint, referring to the fact that the investigation had allegedly been resumed and that its final results had to be awaited.

But there was neither strength nor sense to wait further - the wife, brother and son of the abducted person appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. In the ruling in the case “Temersultanova and Others, No. 41884/11” (https://www.srji.org/resources/search/yandaeva-i-devyat-drugikh-zhalob-protiv-rossii/), the Russian state was found guilty of ineffective investigation into the circumstances of the abduction of Yusup Mezhiev, in violation of his right to life, as well as infliction of suffering on his relatives, who for years had to endure indifference, lies, hypocrisy and outright mockery of themselves by the investigating authorities of the Russian Federation.

The European judges, acting solely within their competence, did not note in this decision (as, by the way, in other cases on Chechnya) that the Russian authorities actually quite effectively channeled the desire of relatives to find out the truth about the fate of the abducted person, that the original goal of all this game of eternal consequence is a) the removal of responsibility for the perpetrators of the crime and b) the suppression of the will of those who want to know the truth.

Physical terror against some, emotional and legal terror against others - this is the essence of what Russia has been and is doing in occupied Chechnya. If we add to this the ever-increasing Russification inclinations against the indigenous population, including the transfer of the study of the Chechen language in schools to an elective course, a ban on its use in kindergartens and nurseries, the abolition of elections as an institution of popular will at all levels and the feudalization of society by leading to power by no one, never elected anywhere on the basis of belonging to the same family, then one can in general terms imagine the policy of “denazification of the masses”, which, referring to plans in Ukraine during the outbreak of the war, a year ago confidently and shamelessly poured out on RIA News Putin publicist Timofey Sergeytsev.

This article is based on the materials of human rights organizations, collected and processed in the electronic database of the Documentation Center. Natalia Estemirova (TsDNE). Some of them can be found here at this address: https://www.nedc-nhc.org/. Its English version is available on the Norwegian Helsinki Committee website: https://www.nhc.no/en/important-looking-envelopes-meant-to-silence-search-for-truth/.

Usam Baisaev