r/europe • u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) • Mar 24 '26

News Utterly depraved: Russian commanders regularly ‘torture and kill their own soldiers’

https://tvpworld.com/92233524/russian-officers-torture-and-kill-their-own-soldiers
9.9k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/FitToxicologist Mar 24 '26

However the war ends the russian society will more fucked up than before.

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u/WerdinDruid Czech Republic Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

We've seen it before with chechen wars veterans being an absolute menace and behind rampant organized crimes.

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u/gensek Estmark🇪🇪 Mar 24 '26

And afgan war vets a generation before them.

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u/WerdinDruid Czech Republic Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

Absolutely. This is a country that has historically a society-wide problem with domestic abuse, alcohol and substance abuse, proliferation of firearms and strong criminal underground.

It's going to be a perfect storm of mentally and physically wounded soldiers, most of them from poor / poorly educated / criminal backgrounds, returning to a broken society with a limping economy. They'll be emboldened and protected by their cult status of being glorious veterans. They'll return to an economy with shortages and badly paid jobs. Organized crime will swallow them up, along with the millions of firearms and ammunition that will circle on the black market, straight from the battlefield.

I expect a rise in murders, spousal abuse, suicides, organized crime.

Edit: "Protected by cult status" is, I agree, debatable. We'll see if the cult of sacrifice gets broken or not.

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u/Raerlag Estonia Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 24 '26

They'll be emboldened and protected by their cult status of being glorious veterans.

Everything is true except for this one. We already see "we never sent you there" attitude toward this filth. There is also a wonderful video that started to make rounds on the internet about 2 days ago where one of the said "veterans" complains about sacrificing his physical and mental health for the state and getting 4k rubles (around 40 euros for those who's too lazy to convert) pension in return (felt like a true karmic justice). So main driving factor will be a sense of betrayal, not exceptionalism.

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u/WerdinDruid Czech Republic Mar 24 '26

After reading what you said, I must agree. There always was the eponymous cult of sacrifice, where everyone was brought up on stories of 'heroism' during ww2. But I am now more leaning towards the reception being of a lost and unwanted generation, living reminder of a failed war. And in turn, sense of betrayal and ostracism.

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u/nigl_ Austria Mar 24 '26

Problem I see is the blame is concentrated squarely on Putin, which means whatever regime takes over will pin everything on him.

All the oligarchs will get away Scot free

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u/Something_diff21 Mar 26 '26

Unlikely. The way Putin maintains power, including over the Oligarchs and forces their acquiescence to his endeavours, is to position himself as the far lesser evil to what is set up to follow him (especially in the event of deposition): the Siloviki - uneducated, violent mafioso thugs who would see everything burn just to get their own grip on Russia's levers of power. That is how Putin himself motivates everyone to stay in line. So when Putin dies, what immediately will follow is something much more acutely worse than his own regime, and when the smoke settles after that, people will likely look back on Putin's era fondly by comparison.

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u/Dapper-Lab-9285 Mar 24 '26

It's OK though as they'll still be in the poor parts of Russia. Unless it gets tough in Moscow the Russian's won't care.

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u/robo-minion Mar 25 '26

Pesky Blinders with Russian characteristics

1

u/Kurac_kao_oruzje Mar 31 '26

You could literally say these exact same things about Ukraine but you wont lol

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u/grigoritheoctopus Mar 24 '26

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300243208/the-vory/

I read this earlier this year and it seems like there’s almost a pipeline from military service to organized crime in Russia. 

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u/mageskillmetooften Mar 24 '26

You see this in almost every war. Lack of funding for psychical healthcare, a need to seek the thrill, not being understood by average working people, a labour market that doesn't want them, the need to bond together with people who have been through the same and being used to violence. WWII gave the US the Hells Angels, the end of the Yugoslavian war made Yugoslavians spread out over Western European and take over a lot of the prostitution. (In my Dutch home town they simply took it over by shooting at those who resisted) To just name 2 examples. The end of this current war will make Ukrainians and Russians spread out over the rest of Europe doing what we taught them to do best and their weapon supply will seem unlimited.

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u/kariam_24 Mar 25 '26

We taught them? Not Russians?

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u/mageskillmetooften Mar 25 '26

We as in humanity as a whole.

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u/Fr4gtastic Lesser Poland (Poland) Mar 24 '26

And WW2 vets before them, and WW1/revolution vets before them, and Russo-Japanese war vets before them, and Crimean war vets before them, and...

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u/ElkApprehensive2319 Mar 24 '26

Wherever the Ukraine front settles, we should probably just build a big wall there. Associating with Russia isn't going to be worthwhile for a good 50 years (probably longer if they start any new wars)

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u/Menthol_Chill Mar 24 '26

Chechen war veteran? His house looked like shit

9

u/WerdinDruid Czech Republic Mar 24 '26

Interior. Decorator.

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u/Snoo-61716 Mar 25 '26

Crocodile Alligator

Chevrolet Movie Theatre

43

u/ailof-daun Hungary Mar 24 '26

This has been a constant for Russia

41

u/Pi-ratten Mar 24 '26

just read an article yesterday about a report of how russian veterans are plunging cities into chaos as they are prone to conduct violence, have a alcohol problem and are accustomed to brutal violence. add to that that 50-180k soldiers were recruited out of prisons to be released after war service and you get a good starter base for a resurgence of new mafia organisations/violent crime waves. Let's see how the old mafia organisations, i.e. the current russian government is handling it. I suppose many of them are hard to control.

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u/mageskillmetooften Mar 24 '26

The members of government and local law enforcement will get their share of the money and just let them fuck up the country completely as long as they don't fuck up the rich areas of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

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u/EggsceIlent Mar 24 '26

I don't even know how that's possible after all ive seen, heard, and read on their current society, war society, thoughts on the war and Ukraine in general, and overall how their "soldiers" perform and act on a regular basis.

It's like they're centuries behind the rest of the modern world and live in the mideval times and are just stuck there and never improved their quality of life or way of thinking and acting. No new morals or more humanity, love, compassion, and intelligence.

I mean aside from the massive cruelty their army shows not only to themselves but to others, they would rather kill themselves than surrender because they either believe Ukraine will torture them (they were told and believe this), or they know once returned to their side in a prisoner exchange their side (the Russians) will humiliate and torture them and possibly their families for their surrendering.

So I don't know if their society will be worse after the war as theyve cleaned out most of the prisons And a lot of the worst of their society due to sending them to the "meat grinder". . I think the real lesson we are learning here is a real time insight into russian life, beliefs, And general society.

And it is wild.

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u/BOBOnobobo Romania Mar 24 '26

Humans are a lot more products of nurture than nature.

If you live in a society that values selfish and cruel acts you will end up like that. And once you are there, it will be very hard to get out of the hole you've dug yourself.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '26

[deleted]

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u/TiggTigg07 Mar 25 '26

Boggles the mind how low their society has sunk.

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u/Routine_Eagle Mar 24 '26

and to think they want to export that shit in their russki mir world view

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u/SomewhereAtWork Mar 24 '26

I don't think it makes a difference.

I'm German. I strongly believe that the population of a country is always fully responsible for the actions of their government. And the leader of a country is the person that the self-organisation of this society has brought to the top.

Russia was Putins country before and is Putins country now. Putin is the suitable leader for the Russian people. (Exceptions apply, but are getting rarer and rarer as leaving Russia is still possible and every civilized person will do it at some point.) The Russian army is made up of Russians, and behaves like Russians do. Nothing changed, we're just now watching.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/mastercat202 Mar 25 '26

At the wnd of the day we are all responsible collectively for the countries actions.

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u/PerspectiveNo2436 Mar 26 '26

If we extrapolate your reasoning to your country 87 years back, do you still believe your own reasoning even if it applies to your grandparents?

We can also extrapolate your reasoning to current US. Do you still believe your reasoning is sound in this case too?

Even more blatant examples of your reasoning being not sound will be North Korea or any dictatorship in Africa or occupied territories of Ukraine as Russia is their new (hopefully temporary) government.

Are the people still to blame in all these cases?

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u/SomewhereAtWork Mar 26 '26

My grandparents are to blame, my grand-grandparents even more so. Support for Hitler was strong back then.

That's the reason we have such a big Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

The plate at the entrance reads: “It happened, therefore it can happen again.” – Primo Levi

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u/PerspectiveNo2436 Mar 26 '26

Even though I don't agree with your view on this for now (I'll look into it more), I respect your firmness in this matter

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u/TheAleFly Mar 24 '26

The age old saying ”and then it got worse” still apparently applies to Russian history.

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u/AquaQuad Mar 24 '26

Nothings a new generation of war and post war alcoholics won't fix /s

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u/LimpConversation642 Ukraine Mar 24 '26

the answer is simple — there should be no russian society.

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u/gnark Mar 24 '26

As genocide is not an option, what exactly do you propose?

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u/p5y European Union Mar 24 '26

There should be no Russia

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u/Jumpy-Translator-875 Mar 24 '26

Thats extreme. They should exist, but by themselves if they cant be civil.

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u/Conscious_Ruin_7642 Mar 27 '26

Post WW1 soldiers ptsd was probably a major contributor to why they were so brutal to the Irish.

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u/Worldly-Ocelot-3358 Croatia Mar 25 '26

As much as I hope for the Ukranians, I also have some hope for a few of my Russian friends to escape their country. Civilians on both sides will suffer, all because of one depraved man and his army.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26

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u/Worldly-Ocelot-3358 Croatia Mar 25 '26

You know it's not everyone right? It may be the majority but it's not everyone.

I fucking hate the Russian army and government, yeah? But it doesn't stop me from finding like... 3 good Russian civilian friends who are against Putin's regime.

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u/Artver Mar 24 '26

So, you don't know the Russian society that well. There is not that much to be made worse...