Mortal regiment

The skeleton of a soldier, which disappeared many years ago, two sailors, which disappeared from the ship in the open sea, the paratrooper, "invisible". “Such cases” learned from the human rights activist Valentina Melnikova, which is happening in the Russian army

Valentina Melnikova is one of the bright figures of Russian human rights. The executive secretary of the Union of Committee of the Russian Soldiers' Mothers, for almost 30 years, has been helping military personnel and their families to defend their rights. Over the years of this struggle, she had seen enough of everyone: beating, murder, disappearance. In the last years of the Soviet Union, “non -eating losses” were calculated by the thousands, now the situation is not so terrible, but there are alarming trends.

- How do you call the current state of affairs in the Russian troops?

- Podolbaysky!

We started in the Soviet Union, and it was hell: no investigations on the murder, disregard for the families of the dead, the denial of losses. These were not even prison concepts, but the Bolshevik system of suppression of personality as such. We managed to turn the situation. At first in 1989, when we were the first to say that soldiers and officers are also people and fall under the universal declaration of human rights. Then in 1998, after the First Chechen War, we proposed to declare an amnesty for all military personnel who arbitrarily left units. The prosecutor’s office spoke only about two thousand, I offered to argue on a box of brandy, and when they raised all the things, it turned out that there were 38 thousand soldiers and officers on the run. About 13 thousand military personnel eventually used the amnesty.

Now the situation is incomparably better from a household point of view, and violent crimes at the end of 2012 were generally reduced to zero. But there are more and more complaints about the behavior of the officers, and the trend is bad: in the spring of 2016, all committees of soldiers' mothers on fighting, extorting money and for any mess are certainly more than in the spring of 2015 .

Executive Secretary of the Union of Committee of the Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Valentina Melnikova at a press conference photo: Alexander Utkin/RIA Novosti

- The breakdown of the old Soviet system, in your opinion, occurred under Anatoly Serdyukov or earlier?

- From the point of view of military documents, it all started from the order of the Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov of October 8, 2005, which prohibited the use of the labor of military personnel in work not related to military service. In fact, it was an official ban on soldier's slavery.

Prior to this, the soldiers were used as you like: on the construction of general cottages, as servants, cooks and laborers. There was a wild case in the military unit of the Ministry of Emergencies - the officer held the conscript in the basement in his country house. When he refused to do some work, the officer simply doused him with acid and threw it on the road.

When Serdyukov came, we got a meeting with him through Ella Pamfilova. We tell him about torture, bullying and beating, and I see that he has an attitude towards his subordinates, like the owner of the company. Serdyukov did not understand how, for example, at the factory, the head of the workshop could beat masters or workers. Then he very tightly monitored cases of violent crime, which the press mistakenly called the "grandfather". Serdyukov clearly showed that it was impossible to beat, and in the army it is very important to give a clear order, because they, as they joke, are one belief - and that from a cap.

At the time of his departure from the Ministry of Defense, there was a very favorable situation: a large budget, good discipline, a practical solution to the problem of providing housing officers - the main army problem in terms of corruption.

- Why is the “hazing” the wrong term?

- This euphemism was invented in Soviet times by military “sociologists” so as not to use the terms from the Criminal Code: extortion, beatings, torture. We immediately realized that these things never depended on how many people served. Often, a flock of recruits under the “roof” of the officer tried to humiliate, intimidate and put on the meter of demobilizes.

- How has the situation in the army changed after Serdyukov's departure?

- Ivanov eliminated slavery, which indirectly influenced a decrease in violent crime, by the end of 2012 she generally fell to zero - only single conflicts remained. Then I wanted to make a strong-willed decision-to dissolve the organization: 80% of the complaints in all our committees concerned the call of the patients, another 20% were transferred to married people and children with parents-pensionaires closer to the house.

But from the second half of 2013, complaints went again. At first, these: officers take bank cards and pin codes to them, do not give money. Then they began to beat. The officers, usually the younger ones, with the rank of senior lieutenant and captain beat. They only came from the school, where no one explained to them that a soldier could not be beaten. At first they are platoon, then company, now they are led by the battalion, and more and more people are acting from their sadism. Here is a recent story with our VKontakte tape: the officer broke the soldier with a bayonet-knife. And there are many such stories.

-Is this a repetition of the situation of the 90s?

- Nothing similar, while this is an individual licentiousness of young officers. But there is a danger that they will again try to build a specific system, when natives from Tuva are refueling in one part, to the other, to the other, the community from the Arkhangelsk region, and so on.

- Are there any statistics on army crime?

- When the word “statistics” speak in Russia, I want to laugh and react obscene. Since 2013, the main military prosecutor's office has not published the number of criminal cases. If in Soviet times, non -eating losses reached four and a half thousand, now, of course, they are less. I can give my approximate assessment - 300 deaths a year, if we count death from severe diseases and dozens of officer suicides.

- Why do soldiers die from diseases?

Under the head physician of Gennady Onishchenko, all vaccinations made a chokh-a person, as if HIV-infected, is generally left without immunity. The guys for 18-20 years in everyday life do not die from pneumonia, and in the military unit the person can be brought to pulmonary edema, after which the patient can no longer be saved. Now the situation is somewhat humanized, gradually brought mortality to a minimum, although we still have no Israel. In the internal troops, doctors divide recruits into groups, vaccinates them and observe - if everything is in order, do further. Here they can be set as an example.

- What are the suicides of officers related to?

- Now more personal stories are not the last century when, after the first Chechen number of officer suicides, it reached 600 a year. Officers are free people, they live at home - except for official problems they have a bunch of others.

- And besides these cases, which are the most difficult?

- The hardest searches of those who disappeared.

We have a paratrooper from Ryazan, a family has been looking for him for two years. It is still not clear whether he left, or he was killed and hidden. The story occurred in July 2014. The boy served on a call, then concluded a contract, he was released home on vacation. Parents brought him to the unit, and the next day they called him and said that his son left a part.

The story is very dark, two months before vacation, all the documents were stolen from him, and he restored his passport, military ID and a bunch of documents. According to the investigation, in the evening of the first day after the vacation he was already in Moscow, from there he went to St. Petersburg, then to Petrozavodsk. It is not clear how tickets were bought, which passport. Witnesses of his return to the unit and its abandonment are found, then they are not found. The investigation was carried out extremely inattentively. Why didn’t they look for him, Ryazan is not some Murom forests? The command of the landing brigade hides an incident with a soldier, I cannot evaluate in a different way.

There was a similar case, the boy disappeared - allegedly arbitrarily left part near Nizhny Novgorod. He was searched for almost seven years, and in 2014 another trace raised the case, and soon the body was found on the territory of the unit - only the shape and bones remained from it. What happened is already impossible to understand.

Members of the Committee of Soldiers' mothers and parents whose children died during service in the army, picket the building of the State Duma, 1994 photo: Vladimir Fedorenko/RIA Novosti

And last summer, two sailors disappeared from the cruiser “Moscow” in the Mediterranean Sea - they immediately opened a criminal case “unauthorized abandonment of the part”. The case of complexity is extraordinary. The body of one sailor quickly found fishermen, and the second family is still looking for. His mother turned to us in the winter, told how she talked with psychics and feels that he was alive. We turned to the consular department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a request to give information about the sailor of the Russian consuls in Greece. Our state itself was obliged to turn to the coastal states for help on the wanted list: the Ministry of Defense and the Prosecutor General in the Russian Foreign Ministry. My working version: the sailors could have a quarrel, and someone dropped them from the cruiser. Although in such cases it is extremely difficult to establish the truth. The last time a similar misfortune was in 2002, when the sailor in Kronstadt disappeared from the boat at the pier. Then, a few months later, divers nevertheless found the body, and it was also impossible to understand what happened to him.

- What do you think about the last glossy case - the death of ordinary Dmitry Monastyrenko, whose stepfather believes that he was killed?

-In stories with the investigation of possible simulations of suicides, we ask the family to fix all the damage so that you can achieve an absentee pathological forensic examination. Once it began with families from Tatarstan and Bashkiria-there the deceased undress, washed and examined, it was in these regions that they first spoke about imitation of suicides. Those families who manage to achieve repeated forensic examination will almost always learn the truth. But it should be very stubborn people.

About five years ago there was a story with the suicide of a young officer. When his body was brought home to the North Caucasus, the officer’s mother said that her son could not kill himself. For more than a month, with our help, she achieved a new examination. All official structures rested as one, but she steadily kept her son’s body in the morgue until we achieved her.

- What is the main problem with the call of conscripts?

- The stupidity of the population itself. When I hear from the 40-year-old mother of the conscript or military man: “The military registration and enlistment office recognized my son as healthy,” I look at her and think: “You are a young fool.” Or when they say that he will tolerate a year. This is when one conscript has a congenital heart disease, the other has lameness, the third has bronchial asthma! In Soviet times, when there was no Internet, outpatient cards were not issued, and people were clogged. Now think that the military registration and enlistment office knows better the condition of your son is complete irresponsibility. Parents are obliged to know everything that concerns the registration of the military registration and enlistment office, and they themselves must transfer all the information about the health of his son to the military registration and enlistment office under a receipt in the personal file of the conscript.

- Your parting words to the mothers of conscripts and military personnel?

- Do not think that in the army of your son will love and regret. This is a difficult kind of activity. Therefore, you need to accurately understand the state of his health, get acquainted with the military commissar and senior doctor and tell them the necessary information - your son has such diseases with which a person cannot serve. If the commissar and the doctor are mistaken, you need to correct them through the district court - there is a technology worked out for years and a huge practice.

I want to say the following mothers to say the following: never say: “Be patient, son” - this always ends with death. How many deaths we had from such stories, and the parents always recalled what they told the soldier “tolerate”. Do not know how to use Nternet - call us, we will find out and will, together with parents and boys, will resolve everything. Remember: there is hard.

We always ask for a soldier: guys, never wait for the development of the conflict. They beat you, took the money, stole something-call, inform. No need to be afraid to tell the truth! If you do not want to disturb your parents, call us, came an SMS or write to VKontakte. We will contact, find out everything and help.