The country does not feel losses

Lucy Kafanov, author of the "Russian Ghost Army in Ukraine" - about mothers, graves, surveillance and propaganda

"It seems to me that this is collective schizophrenia. On the one hand, people guess that Russian soldiers somehow participate in the conflict, but on the other hand, they grew up in propaganda, which they feed them television controlled by the state, and these ideas are difficult to overcome."

Lucy Kafanov - an American journalist born in Moscow, who was taken to the United States, who is now based in Turkey - returned to Russia to shoot a documentary for Russian soldiers who are fighting in the east of Ukraine, more precisely, try to find their traces - Russia officially denies the participation of its military personnel in the conflict, at least, in the composition . regular army units.

Lucy Kafanov, who was currently working with Cristian Science Monitor and Al-Jazira, Vice News, was engaged in hot spots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, the Middle East, and for the filming of the Russian Ghost Army in Ukraine, " she visited the past autumn In Pskov, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Samara Region, Saratov:

Still do not know the truth

- Our task was to understand what was happening. There were reports about the graves of soldiers buried secretly. Those who published this information received threats, there were beatings. We wanted to try to find families who lost their sons, husbands, or find the soldiers themselves who were injured, were on the border and even in Ukraine, and find out from them what happened. Our task was to tell stories about these families, which still do not know the truth, cannot get answers from the state, from the army, and are very suffering because of this.

Lucy Kafanov describes his meeting with the mother of one of the dead soldiers, Natalya Andrianova, her constantly changing mood. On the one hand, she would like the whole country to know what happened to her son, because he died, but is afraid that this would damage her family.

Describing his interviews with relatives of the soldiers, Lucy Kafanov says that these families have very mixed feelings. On the one hand, they are angry with the death of loved ones, on the other hand, they believe that they should treat them as heroes who died, protecting their country. As a result, the journalist says, these families are misleading, it is dishonest, not only their loved ones died, but there are no official explanations, and they can not even really talk about it, express doubts about the official version. One of the mothers was faced with the fact that in her small village people looked at her strangely, she experienced something like pressure from the neighbors-not to transfer everything to politics:

Did not forget in their own state

- It is also important to remember that these are poor families, that they are not politically active, they do not want to protest, they simply want to know the truth about death, and so that the dead soldiers react well, and not betrayed in their own state, which, in their opinion, sent them to fight another country in a war, which Russia did not even officially declare.

Lucy Kafanov says that although the Kremlin denies the participation of the Russian troops in the conflict, many evidence was collected, which cast doubt on the official version. We are talking about the events of August 2014, when the Ukrainian military fought a successful campaign against pro -Russian separatists. Russia then transferred significant army forces to the Ukrainian border, saying that it conducts exercises. As a result, the Ukrainian military was thrown back, and Russian soldiers sent to the border for "maneuvers" began to return home dead or wounded:

Killed at a temporary military deployment point

-How these maneuvers were furnished in August: mobile phones were taken from the soldiers so that they could not say anything to loved ones, news came from them, sometimes for weeks, and then many families received bodies, “cargo-200”. It was officially said that they died during maneuvers. But on the bodies - fragmentation wounds, injuries received in the battlefield. It is hard to imagine that such an advanced army as a Russian one loses dozens, if not hundreds of soldiers during the exercises. Another interesting thing is official notices of death, they showed us such. It said that the soldiers died at a temporary military deployment point. Russian military documents are very extensive if the soldier is wounded on some exercises, it usually describes what order he complied with, where this happened. It was simply said here, killed at the point of temporary military deployment. The place of death is unknown. This is very suspicious.

Remembering cases of threats and attacks on other journalists who tried to investigate the death of Russian soldiers, Lucy Kafanov admits that she felt uncomfortable, although she was not afraid for her life:

- I, as a US citizen, as a journalist who works for an international organization, hoped that there would be no such big threat to me. But if I were an independent Russian journalist, I would probably be more afraid of much more.

Kafanov says that she and her colleagues had a feeling of surveillance:

- In Moscow a little. In Pskov there was definitely some kind of car that was driving behind us, but then somehow disappeared. There were several cases, some of the same car followed, or some strange people approached. We worked with a local producer, a citizen of Russia. I somehow didn’t notice so much, but he saw it all.

Kafanov also recalls the Pskov deputy Leo Schlosberg, who was attacked after he spoke about the dead Pskov paratroopers, and how journalists who tried to make a report from the cemetery were attacked by unknown young people. “We were nervous,” the journalist says. She herself, when trying to interview the St. Petersburg military hospital, immediately aroused the interest of the authorities:

A man from the Ministry of Internal Affairs called a taxi driver by name

- When we went to St. Petersburg, several sources said that in military hospitals in St. Petersburg there was a group of soldiers who were wounded in Ukraine. We decided to go to one of these hospitals. We just wanted to come up and ask, take an interview. They say no, no. But when we knocked on the door, very strange things happened. A soldier looked through the window, some doctor went out, also looked through the window and began to call on a mobile phone somewhere, wave his hand so that we would leave. No one even went out to ask who we are. There was some kind of inner panic. We realized that no one would open the door to us, and we thought - it didn’t work out, we began to leave. As soon as we started crossing the street to sit back in a taxi, one young man ran after us and began to shoot our taxi and us on his mobile phone. It was very strange, but we did not think much about it. We went to other shootings - we took off the view of the city, and spent much more in the car much more than usual, for several hours. When we drove up to our hotel, the driver called. Since he drove the car, he turned on the high -connection call, and we shot and the camera was turned on. And suddenly we hear a voice. He was a man from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who called a taxi driver by name, explained how we looked, asked him about the woman and the man who shot the video at the hospital, asked what we said, what we wanted, who we were, where he took us. And everything ended on that. But after that we started to get very bad. We did not know if our phones were listening to what this means, how it would affect our film. I will not say that I was very afraid for my life. But I was afraid that if we contact some families, with normal families who went through a terrible tragedy, we did not want them to suffer. We were most worried about this.

Answering the question why the death of a soldier does not cause a wide response in society, nor any special sympathy for the families of the dead, Lucy Kafanov says that the country does not feel losses:

- People would have empathized if it were discussed more widely, but they were not very reported. While this is not there, there is hardly a reaction ... Something happens, but they simply do not want to think too much. If they think too much about reality, this can jeopardize the very idea of Russia as a stable country.

Kafanov speaks of collective unbelief in Russia in the reality of what is happening in Ukraine, gives polls according to which only a quarter of people believe that Russian troops are fighting there, and three quarters do not believe that Russia is responsible for bloodshed:

- The death of soldiers or the participation of Russian soldiers in the conflict is not covered by the media state controlled by the state, from where most Russians recognize the news, television draws the Kyiv authorities with a fascist junta that kills the Russian -speaking. And there are these crazy theories of the conspiracy about the "fifth column" threatening Russia from the inside. This creates an atmosphere of fear, because of which the families of the dead soldiers are afraid to act publicly, they are afraid to create problems for themselves.

Kafanov also talks about how well the Kremlin reads public moods and how, if necessary, it makes small changes to the coverage of Ukrainian events:

Incredibly shade the truth. It is difficult for people to understand what is happening

- In the beginning it was said that Russian soldiers or advisers do not fight in Ukraine. By September, rumors about the graves of Russian soldiers went, there were reports of Russian paratroopers captured in Ukraine , and Russian media could not completely ignore it. And there was a new narrative: Russian soldiers go volunteers. This, of course, is absurd. Going on vacation, Russian soldiers fill out a report to the command, where they are informed where they are going to be. To leave the country, you need to obtain permission from the Ministry of Defense and the FSB. And Russian laws do not distinguish whether a person went to fight abroad from beliefs or for money, in any case, from the point of view of the law, a mercenary, and this is punishable by a prison. But one day, three state channel showed the funeral of the “Russian volunteer”, who was killed in Ukraine, a soldier who, according to reports, did not inform the command where he went, but that he did it from patriotic duty. This was the meaning of these reports. Each time the authorities are faced with such evidence, they make small amendments that incredibly shade the truth, and it is difficult for people to understand what is happening.