How Putin’s war is sparking a crisis in Russia

Months after returning to Russia from the front in Ukraine, can not escape the explosions, violence and terror. They echo in your head. Private Alexander Teploukhov has seen more killing and brutality of what any man should endure, some he witnessed firsthand, others he caused himself.

In episodes he calls “memory holes,” the 52-year-old is transported back to the Avdiivka combat zone. in Donetsk, war-torn eastern Ukraine. Each emotion runs through him anew as the scene unfolds before him: his drive has to run; his partner is shot; they are digging; flames spring up; they run again. He can’t escape.

It’s “torture,” Teploukhov tells The Daily Beast.

Each episode lasts two or three minutes, he was beaten twice when he was on public transport. When he recovered, he found people watching him. “When he ended the nightmare, he had no idea where he really was or what he had done during the flashbacks,” he said.

Whatever you think of the soldiers in President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine—some recruited against their will, others brainwashed into believing it was their patriotic duty—the war doesn’t end when they return home. .

Teploukhov was injured in February and returned home to his family in Kurgan, a city 1,282 miles east of Moscow. I’m limping, but my limbs work more or less. Psychologically, however, I am still not recovered: my little son is witness to my difficult relationship with his mother, ”he said. “No sleeping pill helps, my blood pressure goes up to 200, there is severe hypertension, the crises occur almost every night. A psychologist told me that she couldn’t help me, I think she knew exactly how I felt”.

Teploukhov, who spent many years in prison for robbery and other crimes before the war, identifies with the news of other ex-soldiers from the Ukrainian war committing what he sees as “crazy crimes.” He feels a connection to these stories of violence that carry over from the battlefield into life at home.

According to the Russian Ministry of Health, up to 11 percent of Russian soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, but independent psychologists have a different opinion. “Absolutely every soldier who comes back from the front lines has some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, that is inevitable, but of course not everyone uses a gun to shoot people in the mall,” Olga Shelkova told The Daily Beast. , Moscow-based psychiatrist. . “We hear that some veterans are seeking help, but the mental health system for the military is so closed and classified that no one really understands how treatment for soldiers with PTSD works.”

One case was particularly striking for Teploukhov: on August 7, 39-year-old soldier Ildar Bulatov, whom the authorities had convicted as a “deserter”, armed himself with hand grenades and took hostages at a gas station in the city of Ufa. , 800 miles to the east. from Moscow The veteran was discussed after threatening to blow up the gas station if investigators did not close the criminal case against him for deserting his military unit in Ukraine.

Since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has investigated more than 500 criminal cases from the people refuse to fight or desert from the front.

Courtesy of Alexander Teploukhov

Like Teploukhov, who stole his wife’s fur coat to buy a ticket to join the war, Bulatov volunteered to go to Ukraine.

Sergeant Rinat Kultumanov told a local media that Bulatov “was not prepared for a possible death”, so he left the front.

Teploukhov said he sympathized with Bulatov: “The guy felt it was unfair how the authorities treated him and also he didn’t want to go to his doctor, so they packed him up and put him in a mental institution.”

Covered in prison tattoos, Teploukhov was well aware of what life was like behind bars in Russia.

In June, just days before Putin’s soldier Yevgeny Prigozhin turned on him in a coup attempt, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that more than 150,000 Russians had signed the latest conscription contracts.

Olga Romanova, director of the prisoners’ rights group Russia Behind Bars, says that “so far several thousand ex-prisoners, out of more than 50,000 Prigozhin said he recruited for Wagner’s ‘meat grinder’ battles—I have returned home.

Pulled out of the brutal prison system and thrown directly into frontline battles where ex-convicts are treated as little more than cannon fodder by Russian generals or Wagner commanders, large numbers have died on the battlefield. Those who survive are horribly traumatized.

Several of them have already been charged with gruesome crimes on their return to civilian life. Ivan Rossomakhin, 28, has reportedly been charged with murder. during an eight-day break at his home in the Kirov region after joining the Wagner Group from prison where he had been sentenced to 14 years for murder.

The locals said that he had been staggering through the village, with a pitchfork and an axe, making wild threats: “I will kill them all! I’m going to cut an entire family to pieces! No one could stop him before he allegedly killed a woman.

Another convicted murderer who was freed to go fight in Ukraine was arrested in connection with the murder of six civilians after he had completed his term in the war. Igor Sofonov, 37, has reportedly been released from prison. to join Storm Z, which is the defense ministry’s state-backed version of Wagner’s ex-prisoner brigades.

His six alleged victims were found in two burning buildings in the town of Derevyannoye.

Romanova and her prisoners’ rights group have been trying to provide support for Teploukhov, who says he has not received the pay due to him for his service in Ukraine. “There is no doubt that 100 percent of all these soldiers, ex-prisoners, have severe forms of PTSD, many of them use drugs, drink a lot of alcohol, no one is giving them psychiatric help, and there is a very high possibility that many of them they will commit more crimes or die upon return from an alcohol overdose,” he said.

One of the founders of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers, Valentina Masliakova, says that most military contracts have not ended yet and that PTSD problems will become “a major problem, a much bigger problem” when thousands more traumatized soldiers return from the front lines. “For now, we haven’t heard from anyone, whose contracts actually expired, only Wagner soldiers are coming back, so far and the wounded.”

Courtesy of Alexander Teploukhov

Teploukhov was wounded at Donetsk in September, but remained at the front until February with torn muscles and a frozen leg. “None of our boys could sleep at night, the things we see before our eyes are happening as if they were real. I’m looking for mines under my feet, every clap of thunder sounds like artillery fire,” he told The Daily Beast. “I can’t get any compensation for my service, for my injuries, I can’t buy my wife a new fur coat, so I just live off her account,” he said.

He admitted he was struggling to control his anger and frustration: “I yell at my wife and sometimes get violent at home, which I’m ashamed of later.”