cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/46116145
In Russia’s border regions, where thousands of troops have been concentrated since the start of the war in Ukraine, women are increasingly facing violence and hostility from soldiers. Many of the troops are former convicts; others simply feel a sense of impunity, knowing that instead of being sent to prison for their actions, they will merely be sent back to the front.
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The soldier beat her on the head, strangled her, and threatened her with a knife. “He strangled me like he knew what he was doing — in a way that wouldn’t kill me right away, but instead put me into a trance, subdue me, and make me suffer,” Svetlana recalls.
She was lucky: one of the neighbors eventually heard the noise outside and appeared with a flashlight. The soldier immediately released Svetlana and ran away. The neighbor tried to catch him but could not keep up.
It later emerged that the attacker was Alexei Kostrikin, a repeat offender previously convicted of theft and robbery who had been recruited to fight in the war. Later that day, after the attack in Shebekino, he went to the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka, where he killed a man and raped the man’s wife. As Svetlana explained, a ballistic examination revealed that the shell casing she fired and the bullet that killed the man in Tavolzhanka came from the same rifle.
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In the absence of separate statistics on crimes committed by military personnel, the scale of the problem can only be inferred from indirect data. According to court records, Russia saw 2,000–2,200 cases of rape and 8,000–8,300 cases of other sexual offenses annually between 2022 and 2024. By comparison, the period of 2019–2021 saw an annual average of 1,800–2,000 rape cases and 6,700–7,500 cases of other sexual offenses. The peak occurred in 2023, with 2024 incidents still remaining well above pre-war levels. Meanwhile, the proportion of convictions has remained consistently high at around 85–90%.
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In November 2024, the media covered another case in Belgorod Region. The defendant, also a soldier, was accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl. The Astra Telegram channel identified the serviceman in question as Corporal Alexander Andreev, 41. The investigation established that Andreev had raped a schoolgirl from the village of Veselaya Lopan three times. After one of the counts, he tried to coerce her into silence by paying her 180,000 rubles ($2,370), but raped her again a week later. Andreev was arrested and is under criminal proceedings.
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"How come you don’t want to talk? I was at the front!”
Harassment by servicemen has become so widespread that women in the Belgorod Region are now afraid to take trains. The routes connecting Belgorod to Moscow are popular among groups of servicemen, according to The Insider’s sources. Carriages — both compartments and third-class options — are frequently filled with soldiers who spend time in the dining cars, get drunk, and behave aggressively. Other passengers, the women observed, try to avoid getting involved in any sort of conflict with them — soldiers returning from the front are seen as people who are accustomed to violence and are often armed, and many civilians are apprehensive about “messing with the heroes,” understanding that in the event of an incident, the state is likely to side with the military.
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The problem is not only the sheer number of criminals convicted of rape and murder among Russia’s frontline personnel, but also the very practice of enlisting in the army as a way to avoid criminal punishment. Such policies send a clear signal of impunity: even if you do something that would warrant a prison sentence, you can still just go back to the front. Statistics from the Ministry of Justice show more than a tenfold increase in the number of criminal cases frozen at the stage of court proceedings. The spike was particularly noticeable in 2024.
The increase occurred in the category of so-called “other cases,” which includes the defendant’s inability to participate in the proceedings due to being called up for military service — a provision adopted in the spring of 2024. More than 17,000 cases have been suspended in court, with an untold number having been frozen at the stage of investigation after a suspect made the choice to solve their legal troubles by signing a contract with the Ministry of Defense.
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Russia, guardian of Christian values.
Russia has many conscripts often drawn from prison populations of murderers and rapists, few soldiers.