They plundered, murdered, mocked people

I thought I was going to save people from terrorists who wanted war. Supposedly, Khattab (Amir ibn al-Khattab — an Arab mercenary and terrorist, one of the leaders of armed groups of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in 1995–2002 — S.P.) had arrived with his cronies and, with the help of various Western Islamist organizations, was torturing peaceful Chechens. And the glorious Russian armada was supposed to roll in, bash the troublemakers over the head, and calm everyone down. Everything turned out differently.

What happened there was the mirror image of what we’d been prepared for. The biggest chaos, troubles, and tragedies were all caused solely by the Russian army and the Interior Ministry. If they’d simply removed us from there, the Chechens would have figured things out on their own.

We were assigned round-the-clock checkpoint duty. The checkpoints were supposedly for document checks. In reality, the checkpoint was simply a tribute collection point. There weren’t many roads, and all of them were blocked in the mountains by Russian units.

They screwed on a sign: “What are you staring at? 50 rubles — and move along!” Later they were asked to take it down because some officer spotted it.

We were also sent on so-called “sweep operations.” The plan was for troops to cordon off a district, and we’d be thrown inside. The slightest movement — shoot, pull back, burn everything you can, dig in, fire a signal flare.

We went there thinking we were the toughest and we’d crush everything, blow it up, tear it apart. The attitude toward the civilian population was that they were all Wahhabists. We could beat people, treat them simply like meat.

During sweep operations, looting and robbery happened constantly. People are led out of their homes, armed men go in and simply take everything they want. Even though they can see the people live in poverty. But robbing during war — that wasn’t considered shameful.

I brought home a stolen tracksuit. At the time, I told my wife it had been issued to us. I couldn’t say I’d stolen it. But not taking it wasn’t great either, because everyone was taking things. As they say in the police: “If he doesn’t drink, he must be an informant.” If you don’t take the tracksuit, you’re not part of the group, and you can expect trouble.

You have to play along — “wow, cool, trophies, now we’ll take all this from you, you bastards.” My squad leader comes up to me: “Look — this watch yells 'Allahu Akbar' every hour. Let’s shove it in for you.” He shoves it in, it doesn’t fit. I say: “Seryozha, we’ll get caught — it’s sticking out. The military police will see it and there’ll be questions.” So we left it.

There’s not much you can do when you’re already there. You can try to minimize things: not shoot somewhere, let someone go. You catch a guy on the street — he has no documents. You look at him: some farmer — what kind of militant is he?

If I turn him in now, they’ll throw him in a pit, beat him, and he’ll confess to everything under the sun. They’ll grow out his beard, then kill him and dump him somewhere by the highway.

Basically, I have the power to preserve a person’s health and life. If there’s nobody from the military police or other crazies nearby, you can tell him: “Go, run — I didn’t see you.” Or simply not shoot.

I desperately wanted to come home. When you arrive, you can’t tell anyone anything. Not because you don’t want to remember the war, but because there’s nothing to tell — we didn’t do anything good.

Looting, killing, tormenting people — there was plenty of that. No liberation, no fight against terrorism — none of that existed.

At first, being back home was hard. If someone woke me up, I couldn’t understand where I was — that could make me snap. I’d jump around the apartment, leap away from windows, search for my rifle, screaming: “What the?! What the?! What the?!” The first thought: I’ve been kidnapped, captivity.

The circuits inside burn out from the tension, and you start doing things that normal people don’t do. An acute sense of intolerance for certain things appeared.

You could kick down the door at the housing office because they said something ridiculous to you and were mocking your veteran benefits. Everything starts to infuriate you, and you become unhinged.

After Chechnya came the realization of what happens in war — how wrong and senseless it all is. In the OMON unit, it was more, let’s say, humane.

Our oath says: “Serving the people, I serve the law” — but in Chechnya, everything was the opposite. That’s when I decided to leave. I called some contacts I’d kept from my time at “Vechernyaya Ryazan.” I wrote my first article while still in service — “How People Become Cops.” I tried to show this transformation: how a person joins the police genuinely wanting to do something good, and either becomes the same kind of bastard, or stays silent and mimics the bastards, or leaves.

In 2015, I gathered my family and left for Odesa — my family is from there. Then in Russia they designated me an extremist for my film about the leaders of Odesa’s “Right Sector.” From 2017, due to family circumstances, I ended up in Finland, and here I remain.

When the full-scale war started, the first thing on my mind was: I’m going there, rifle in hand, to fight for Ukraine. I contacted Ukrinform and said: “What can I do?”

They started sending me videos to edit: “Hit this hard — it’ll be more useful. There are enough people running around with rifles for now.” I kind of self-mobilized — I need to do something against this war.

I know how horrifying everything happening in Ukraine is right now. The Russian army is heading there — a stinking lump of diesel-and-gunpowder filth, with all its hatred of humanity.

This garbage is going to crawl into Ukraine. They’ll defile everything, do the same thing there that they did in Chechnya. Chechnya was simply a ruined dump after Russia. The people, children with shattered psyches — they caused so many problems for all Chechens, for several generations.

This filth needs to be kept far away, in some kind of cage. It must not be let loose where normal people live.