Russian recruits tell of beatings, torture and sex assaults

By ANDREW OSBORN

Russia's once mighty armed forces are riddled with Clockwork Orange-style sadism where senior soldiers subject their junior colleagues to vicious beatings, torture, sexual violence and death threats, a report claimed yesterday.

After three years of research and more than 100 interviews with victims, New York-based Human Rights Watch said the problem of bullying - known as Dedovshchina or "rule of the grandfathers" - had reached horrific levels which were sapping morale and undermining combat readiness.

Official figures say 25 soldiers have died as a result of bullying by older conscripts since the beginning of the year, 12 others have died from excessive force used by their officers and 109 have committed suicide.

Independent analysts say the real figures are much higher, however, with many deaths being erroneously recorded as accidental or occurring outside military service.

Military service in Russia is obligatory and lasts two years; the first-year recruits are typically bullied by the second-year ones who are known as the "deds" or grandfathers.

Sitting nervously in a central Moscow cafe yesterday, his eyes haunted by what he has been through, an ex-conscript who would give his name only as Aleksei described his ordeal.

Aleksei, 20, was posted to a parachute detachment in the southern Russian town of Novorossysk last June; by February of the following year he had fled and been discharged on medical grounds.

"My problems began when my officer told me that my mother had got in touch and asked why her son was not writing and why he did not seem to be receiving his food parcels," he told the Independent.

Aleksei was being forced to give his food parcels to second-year conscripts. "After the letter my officer told all the other soldiers that I was an informer, that they could do what they wanted with me until the end of my term and that they could kill me and treat me like a dog ... "

Aleksei was routinely beaten up, had his nose and teeth broken, was woken at midnight every night and forced to perform back-breaking physical exercises (sometimes in a gas mask), was threatened with death and strangled, had his paltry monthly wage of 160 rubles ($7.94) stolen and was regularly humiliated.


The report itself, entitled The Wrongs of Passage, details several horrific cases; of a conscript being stabbed with a penknife for refusing to obey his "ded" and of another being forced to simulate homosexual acts.

Humiliated in front of his peers and consumed with shame, the latter took his own life.

Diederik Lohman, the report's author, said yesterday that dedovshchina was weakening the Russian army from within.

"An army of the sick and the beaten is not going to be the most effective. Nor is an army composed of victims and abusers. It [dedovshchina] has created an almost universal desire not to serve.

"It's stunning that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, who is so preoccupied by national security, is ignoring this practice. It's not like he doesn't know about it."

A spokesman for Russia's Defence Ministry said the authorities would not comment until they had read the report.

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