Russian Soldier loses legs in bullying ordeal

[Felix the Cat]

Soldier loses legs in bullying ordeal (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/28/wrussia28.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/28/ixworld.html)

Russia's defence minister yesterday condemned brutal bullying that left an army conscript fighting for his life as "shameful" and ordered a general to investigate.

The life of Andrei Sychev, 18, was "hanging by a thread", doctors said, two weeks after surgeons had to remove his legs, genitals and fingers after beatings by drunken soldiers.

"This shameful fact happened on New Year's Eve," the minister, Sergei Ivanov, said. "Why did it take 25 days for Moscow to be informed?"

Mr Ivanov sent Gen Alexei Maslov to investigate the incident at the Chelyabinsk tank academy in the Urals and sacked its chief.

According to reports, Pte Sychev was forced to crouch for three hours while being kicked and raped. His sister told the media he was tied to a chair, with circulation to his limbs cut off.

The soldier complained of pain in his legs for three days but was not sent to a civilian hospital for treatment until gangrene had already developed. Details of his ordeal came to light when an anonymous caller tipped off local human rights activists.

The most active group fighting the epidemic of bullying in the Russian military, the Soldiers' Mothers' Committee, yesterday called for Mr Ivanov's resignation.

According to official statistics, believed to be much understated, 25 teenagers died in the first half of 2004 as a result of bullying and more than 100 committed suicide.

[Gleb]

Extremely shameful, although probably exaggerated by journalists. It is now a huge scandal in Russia overshadowing even the gas conflict. The rape part is probably not true either, there was nothing said about it in the first report.
It is a huge problem, basically all the newly-drafted are bullied in one way or another, often to the point when they get fed up with it and shoot the bullies, you can read it in the reports almost every week.

[OVERWATCH]

I had posted earlier about reports by Soviet military defectors regarding the bully system in the Soviet military.

Regardless of rank, first year conscripts or officers even, are referred to as 'boys' and second year conscripts as 'old men'. 'Boys' are expected to cater to the needs of the 'old men', for all mundane tasks and soldierly duties. They also report that officers who were 'boys' were routinely ignored when giving direct orders to 'old men'. One defector reported that a 'boy' officer had given the future defector an order, who was an 'old man'. He then threatened the officer that he would break his teeth, and the officer never again gave an order to this 'old man'.

Alcoholism was rampant, numbers of solders were killed, severely disabled, or hospitalised when the Army started replacing ethyl alcohol antifreeze with poisonous ethylene glycol, because draining vehicles of their antifreeze for their alcohol content was commonplace.

[Gleb]

Yep, everything is true. There was nothing of this kind before WWII, what happened was - the real soldiers from the front got mixed up with youngsters who "never smelled gun powder" after 1945 and of course they didn't treat them very well, after this it became a tradition.
Hopefully this is going to change after 2008 army reforms.

[Jimbo Gomez]

OMFG this is awful. They should hang those bullies.

[Jonathan]

I saw a documentary on this actually. In some camp, the new recrutes are called "spirits" and get treated like shit. In a quasi-ritual, the "spirit" is put on his elbows and knees on the four legs of an upside down stool, then beaten with pots and frying pans. If he falls off, he has failed and remains as a spirit. If he stays on for a while, then he becomes an "elephant". "Elephants" have to go through some other ritual too before becoming a "grandfather". The worst thing is that all these seems to be tolerated. The Officers who were questioned about it were just like "meh, shit happens".

Bullying goes on in most armed forces though. They had a big think about this in Britain only a while ago.

[cerberus]

It becomes a culture , "Deepcut".

[Kodos]

Hazing is nothing new in history though this is rather extreme. Gleb's explanation makes sense, a russian enlisted soldier who survived WWII( with its horrendous causalties on the russian side) is not going to think much of an officier whos never seen combat.

[Gleb]

It is extremely shameful and it would not become such a scandal if the majority of Russians did not think so too.
It is the nature of teenagers to be competitive and to try to prove that they are better than everyone around, here such a competition taken to an extreme form. Angry and strong teenager + alcohol + absence of adults = not a very good mixture.
At least those are just beatings and in 99% of all bullyings in Russian army is beatings. It is somewhat an entrance exam for "boys", for example a very popular one - the guy is punched in the chest with a buttstock of a Kalashnikov to make sure the bolt goes all the way back and reloads. If he doesn't fall or make a sound he is treated much better in the future.
The talks about rape are bullshit, journalists are just trying to make it sensational. No one in the army would do something like that, if someone does he would probably get killed by his own people.

[Felix the Cat]

It becomes a culture , "Deepcut".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepcut_Barracks

[Petyr Baelish]

...
In June 1995, Private Sean Benton, of Hastings, East Sussex, was found dead at Deepcut barracks with five bullet wounds to his chest. The coroner concluded that he had committed suicide. Ballistics tests suggested that only one bullet was fired from close range and the others from a distance.
...

LOL, how the hell does someone shoot himself in the chest five times?

[Felix the Cat]

Russia officer fined for slavery (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4674366.stm)

A military court in Russia has sentenced a senior officer serving in the country's elite missile forces for hiring out his troops as slave labour.

The missile forces are considered less prone to the violent bullying that results in hundreds of non-combat deaths and suicides every year.

But senior officers acknowledge that hiring out conscripts to supplement officers' low salaries is commonplace.

The case comes amid an unprecedented furore over abuse of conscripts.

A incident that provoked particular anger was the treatment of a conscript at a prestigious tank college in the Urals, where a 19-year-old was almost tortured to death by his colleagues.

Bullying

On Thursday, the military court in city of Novosibirsk concluded that deputy commander Vladimir Kontonistov had abused his office by hiring out young conscripts to commercial organisations for earnings he then personally pocketed.

It fined him $2,000 (£1,125), and banned him from command for three years - a sentence prosecutors said was too lenient, and one they intended to appeal against.

This is just one of the cases of what Russians call "behaviour contrary to the code of conduct" - the bureaucratic term for bullying.

It is not a new phenomenon - indeed, the Russian imperial army was known for its brutal treatment of its own soldiers.

But it is now one of the major themes in Russia's leading newspapers and on television and radio, following the incident involving the 19-year-old in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk.

The attack has sickened and shocked even those inured to stories of military violence.

Amputated

The conscript was subjected to a brutal three-hour assault, then denied medical treatment.

The injuries he sustained resulted in doctors having to amputate both legs, his genitals and fingers. Photos of the young man before the assault, and in intensive care in hospital, have appeared in Russian newspapers and on internet sites.

Adding to the widespread outrage, the country's defence minister initially dismissed the case as "nothing serious".

Many Russian commentators say little will change until Russian society accepts that the army reflects its own problems, most importantly the frequent absence of accountability.