Ukraine: why Putin mobilizes criminals

If anyone tells you that Vladimir Putin has restored order in Russia, he has never set foot in remote neighborhoods and remote provinces. This country is very violent, plagued by the mafia who share local power with the police. Rampant corruption at all levels of the pyramid – a natural consequence of the extreme verticality of Putin’s power – has reduced honest activity to a minimum. Property rights are powerless, offered to all extortionists.

The notoriously brutal and ruthless character of the penal islanders of Russia was not enough to tame a population morally driven by communism for a hundred years. The rate of solving crimes is very low and no one believes in the justice of the courts: the system invented by Putin is anarchist and kleptocratic. The longer a nation suffers under a totalitarian yoke, the longer it will take to find its way back to civilization. In this regard, Russia, emerging from the long Soviet tunnel with no historical references to the exercise of law and liberty, is far from seeing the light of day.

We measure today the human catastrophe caused by the partial mobilization decided by Putin on September 21. For the 300,000 people who mobilized, nearly a million fled, including most of the most competent private executives – the commercial IT sector, for example, is now devastated. It was among the peripheral “little people” that most of the young people were forcibly taken away, which clearly had nothing to do with the patriots rushing to fight against Ukrainian Nazism. Partial mobilization has dug gaping holes in certain villages as well as in big cities. “I have the impression that we have become a country of women,” lamented one Moscow photographer. The demasculinization of society further exacerbated general levels of insecurity: the more guards sent to the front lines, the fewer to watch businesses, shops, and homes.

Socially close

In the context of the ongoing war, the prison world has become a reservoir of soldiers who can work as they please. An estimated 40,000 prisoners were recruited by the Russian army in general, and by the sinister “Wagner militia” in particular. The contract offered to them is considered a remission in exchange for a commitment on the front line. that New York Time revealed that many of those who benefited from the reduction, by presidential decree, even before send them to the battlefield. International observers are sounding the alarm: by entrusting heavy weapons to criminals driven wild by long stays in Russian prisons and by assuring them that they are now free, we risk seeing them confidently allowed in – as, for example, to loot, rape, massacre, or escape. self. But to believe that this worries the Kremlin is to misunderstand Russian power.

Lenin called the criminals “socially close.” He means by this that criminals, perverts, murderers, convicts, may be placed at the service of the revolution provided they are exterminated from their prisons and bars, that they are equipped with weapons and that they are ordered to rob merchants, tenants, heads of business and monks. His motto, “Anchor the raiders!” “, clear enough. Revenge on the nobles and bourgeoisie, execute them without trial, seize everything they own, for this is in line with history, serving the class struggle and helping rid the Bolsheviks of their worst enemy: the exploiters.

In March 1917, Kerensky, Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government, decreed a general political amnesty. On an antique postcard, he is depicted in front of a burning prison. The intention is democratic, but the method is reckless. Clouds of ideological vultures, attracted by the smell of gunpowder, power, and money, swell into the rioting ranks of the future. Lenin, having reached the top of the state, rushed to recruit everything that the country possessed from sandals without convictions or laws, street criminals, drunken and incompetent demobilized soldiers in search of a high-sounding title. . The mob worked wonders. Testimony of the fateful days of October depicts Saint Petersburg succumbing to debauchery where anyone was shot, where cellars were emptied and where drunkenness reached new heights. Courtesans strutting around in the finest evening gowns of great ladies of nobility, reeling in the arms of thugs who have become princes. We had sex indiscriminately – as we would have done in Hitler’s party, just before the final siege of the bunker. Immorality is heating up.

prisoner of war

During partial mobilization, Putin needs socially close. The average Russian is reluctant to leave for his skin to be pricked by those he was propagated yesterday as a brother to protect. Forget it ! Prisons are full of bitter people who would rather frolic under mortar rounds than be gently tortured by their guards. For the most part, it was Evguéni Prigojine who was in charge of collecting them. A wealthy oligarch who is very close to Putin, cynical to his core and repeatedly proven ruthless (he crushed a deserter’s skull with a sledgehammer and posted a video of it on social networks), he is the ideal person to turn Russian convicts into cannon fodder. He gives them an honorific language full of “courage,” “glory,” and “medallions,” but it’s mobster honor: a fantasy crashing into reality.

In reality, Prigojine would push them from behind so they would be killed by the Ukrainian front. They would fall in waves, group by group, without being able to retreat: behind them, the Chechen executor Ramzan Kadyrov awaited them, accused of killing without hesitation anyone who refused to die. Insufficient armament, poor quality bulletproof vests and helmets, non-existent training, zero real combat experience: Wagner’s infantry numbers were negligible, he had no choice but to dash forward like a headless hen. Prigozhin organized his troops to the best of Stalin’s abilities on the Eastern front. “You can only leave here dead or mad,” said a German officer in Stalingrad. This also applies to the Wagner militia. (For a more precise picture of this billionaire-organized massacre, we refer to our previous article on the Battle of Bakhmout.)

So these former convicts, when they survive, which is rare, are convicts of the “meat grinder”, as witnesses of current events in Bakhmout call them. And what do the residents of Russia think? He didn’t react, on the principle of “As long as we send the bastards there, we won’t send my son”. Understandable reflections, complicated silences, dull terror. The forced suicides of the Wagners are not scandalous because, if they spread too much, Putin’s state will crack down and we prefer not to know how.

Rumor has it of an impending second partial mobilization. We are talking about millions of men. We suspect that’s unlikely (how many millions more do we have to put out into the streets to catch the wayward, when three-quarters of the population expects the war to end soon?), but we don’t want to play with fire. After all, let the Wagners die, and all if need be, as long as we stay away from the bombardment! Russia mitridated to horror. He was drowning in self-loathing. On the other side of the border, Ukraine is playing out its life. We continue to believe in each other. We are still proud and laughing. We have mountains of seriously injured and mutilated people, hundreds of thousands of children kidnapped, cities razed to the ground, we are cold, we are scared, but we are free. We suffer to keep it that way.

For once

Poutinis like to exclaim: “That’s too simple! What do you think? That there is good on the one hand and evil on the other! But that’s too Manichean, your business! That never happened! »

Okay. Sometimes it happens. The good is not perfect but feels. Evil is not absolute but creates fear. Compare the war pictures produced by the armies on both sides. The difference is terrible. Among Ukrainians, emotion and hope can be seen with the naked eye. It smiles all the time, prays, has a clear look, readable determination. Among the Russian people there is only violence, bitterness, anger, anger. Only a spirit of bad faith can deny this contrast. I’m sorry.

Yes, there is good and bad in this war. And the unintentional kamikaze of the Wagner militia, these pathetic moving targets, these souls treated like beasts, predators turned prey, knowing it better than anyone. One day, the most inhuman will testify. They would tell how the Chechens massacred their comrades. And Putinism, there will be no more questions. One day, haggard, the truth will finally come out of Bakhmout’s abyss.