I believe that they are alive

...About these days, five years ago, they disappeared. As reported in the media, “they stopped showing up for court hearings.” Three defendants in the “ Ulman case ”: GRU special forces captain Eduard Ulman and his subordinates, lieutenant Alexander Kalagansky and warrant officer Vladimir Voevodin, disappeared without a trace.

By that time, their investigative and judicial nightmare had been dragging on for five years. Eduard spent two years in a pre-trial detention center. Twice - in 2004 and 2005. — the jury acquitted the scouts. For this acting The head of the Chechen government, Ramzan Kadyrov, reacted as follows: “Obviously, the court did not understand the will of the Chechen people.” For me, the jury's verdicts said it all.

It is clear that we, mere mortals (journalists, bloggers, the public), have no access to the case materials. And there was a lot of secret information in the case that was not subject to disclosure. Moreover, at that time the counter-terrorism operation was still ongoing in Chechnya, and GRU units continued their work there. But not every criminal case is capable of gaining such a huge public response; not every defendant was acquitted twice by 12 juries - with different compositions. Therefore, I have no doubts about their innocence. More precisely, that on that ill-fated day, January 11, 2002, Edward simply could not do otherwise. And bewilderment grew that their commanders, who had given them the criminal order, were not in the dock next to them.

And why wonder what one could have done in the place of reconnaissance group commander E. Ulman during that combat mission. When we find ourselves in his place, then we will reason. And sitting at home or in the office at the computer, we do not have the moral right to rant about it. That's why I have complete confidence in the jury that acquitted the intelligence officers twice. But under pressure from the Chechen side, both verdicts were appealed and overturned by the military board of the Supreme Court.

Five years ago, in April 2007, an inexorable prosecutor's office was confidently leading the trial to find the officers guilty of murdering six people and receiving long prison sentences. A year earlier, the Constitutional Court made it impossible for further consideration of the “Ullman case” and other similar cases by a jury, entrusting the fate of the intelligence officers to the will of a military judge. It became obvious that the twice acquitted officers would still end up behind bars. Nevertheless, nothing in their behavior suggested any intention to escape. They did not appear in court for the next hearing on April 12, 2007. Since then, no one has known anything about their whereabouts. After this, the missing intelligence officers were put on the federal wanted list. And in June, the SKVS sentenced them in absentia, condemning them to long terms of imprisonment. To this day there is no information about their fate.

A variety of assumptions were made about this: they fled, were kidnapped by Chechens, liquidated by Chechens or their colleagues. Chechen human rights activists and officials, in turn, pointed fingers at the support group for the accused - military intelligence, a lawyer and their public defender D. Rogozin. Any version had its grounds. And not one of them has yet been removed from the accounts. However, it has not been confirmed. Over the past five years, the disappearance of three intelligence officers has become surrounded by a thick layer of rumors and speculation. The orphaned blog of Eduard Ullman is still replenished with comments of various kinds - from expressions of sympathy to cursing of “sympathizers” among themselves.

Not the slightest new information that would shed any light on their disappearance has been received since April 12, 2007. Therefore, I personally believe that they are alive and in no danger. And that someday we will be able to verify this. But, apparently, this will be a completely different era. When will the courts stop fulfilling political orders and rely only on the law. And in the dock it will not be the switchmen who will sit, but the real criminals. When the authorities stop pitting the people and the army against each other, then shifting all responsibility onto the junior officers who carried out the order. In general, a lot must change in the life of the country so that the “Ulman case” can finally be put to rest, and the CTO veterans in the North Caucasus can live in peace, without fear of being convicted for performing military duty.