The plane is preparing to take off. I find my place. I sit inside, on the right side of the window very young girl, on the left — Russian military in camouflage with a “for Russia” badge. Looks about 35 years old.
We take off, the girl turns to the military and says,
- Wow, now you hit the front?
— Not now, I'm on vacation, I was home. But I'm coming back. I've been here almost the first weeks. “ he answers.
Sitting between them, I realize that the next fewer hours of the night flight from Ural to Moscow will be unforgettable. We're going to so-called peculiar military operation in all way.
At times like this, it seems to be the alleged fresh elite. This military was 1 of the fewer in economical class Aeroflot. He kept calling the flight attendant to order and pay for it. For 2 full hours he spoke rather loudly about where the brigade came from, how they entered Ukraine in the spring of 2022, how unfair it was to say that “Russians are perverts” due to the fact that they entered shops and local homes, and those generously gave them everything. “Is this the way to behave toward perverts? ” he said.
He could publically tell stories about his ministry and even discredit an army without risking himself. I, as a writer for a publication recognized in Russia as ‘foreign agent’I couldn't do it. I could postgraduate from journalism school, work in the media for years, build a career, but the ability to talk louder under these conditions was his — An uneducated man from the Ural village who went to war for large money. In that sense, he can be called an elite.
“A troubled conscience is the main consequence of war”
After a half-hour conversation about the front, the girl at the window asked with the same enthusiastic tone: “What does it feel like to kill a man for the first time?” “Just like that...” replied the military.
Initially, many people were curious in what was in the head of a associate of the alleged peculiar military operation. In the first year of the war, erstwhile friends of my friends from Uralu were returning on vacation, they were indeed filled with specified questions. But more people came back — and people stopped asking. My friend told me that erstwhile her friend returned from the war, she was curious in talking about his experiences. And he told her how after he was wounded, he woke up at night terrified, and the most crucial thing he realized was that Man turns into a beast.. At the beginning of the invasion, a priest who fought in Afghanistan, told Holod the same thing: “A tormented conscience is the main consequence of war.”
I think that many people have heard from their friends so many terrible, not heroic, and in any places immoral details that they don't want to have specified conversations anymore. In Ural, where many thefts occurred during the war, according to statistics. In addition, in the 4th year of the war, I know fewer people of Ural who, for once, would not shake the hand of a man who was later wounded or killed in the war. The interest replaced the desire to distance themselves.
Seeing a man in camouflage in the corridor of a clinic, in a bus or in a buying centre, many people sit or decision distant and alternatively spin. The broker who sells my rented flat asks me not to tell fresh buyers that they are inactive military — for any reason people do not want to buy apartments next to them. 1 of my colleagues, a writer who regularly films soldiers in public places, stated that “It is expected that they will origin trouble”. Apart from the fact that returning from war commits, for example, killings, interior conflicts arise.
Society Under Pressure
Last year, the military on leave broke the door in my hallway. In the morning, he kindly agreed to pay for everything and compensate for the damage, and his aggression explained that his intercom had not been opened for besides long. This year at 4:00 in the morning, a drunk neighbour in camouflage with the letter “Z” mixed the floors and first tried to open my door with the key, and erstwhile he failed, he started digging them.
W Moscow is little frequent. But the participants of the alleged peculiar military operation are already a well-known view in the capital.
When you go to a notarial office, you hear humanitarian aid being collected there. At the entrance to any cities in fresh Year's Eve there were announcements about collecting cans of corn and peas for “our fighters”. Residents of border regions They have long felt military action on their own. In the center of Moscow you can meet young men with amputated limbs, and drones They hit Moscow suburbs.
But it's like there's an unspoken consensus in society. The military closes themselves, they put on headphones to watch tiktoki, or they conduct video talks with the comrades from the front to escape into their acquainted world. And the people around them slip by, pretend they don't exist. Consensus works until soldiers lose control — due to alcohol or PTSD - and they won't start talking.
ALEXANDER ZEMLINICHENKO / AFPRussian soldiers with Russian president Vladimir Putin, February 2025.
People possibly dangerous
A man in camouflage in modern Russia does not inspire respect or a sense of security. I take a taxi in the city of Ural, and the driver tells me how he came back from PTSD and now works in a taxi for therapeutic purposes — his psychiatrist said he had to be more social towards people.
— With PTSD, you decision very rapidly from calm to aggressive — I tell him.
— I'm doing fine, people don't annoy me, but there's been a case recently: a couple of gay men got into the car, of course I threw them out into the cold..
My friend's mom, the cab driver who came back from the war, offered to change the way at night to have sex. In the subway, at railway stations and airports, besides careless a look may be a signal to another lost soldier who approaches and asks you to escort him, drunk, to the train.
They're possibly dangerous people, and it's best not to pay attention to them and stay distant from them. It is not spoken out — You can't talk loud at all these days.. But, I believe, it is besides felt by the wives of men who died in the war. They complain that their children's schools do not supply adequate patriotic education, they do not honor adequate heroic military acts.
In 2024, I heard from many soldiers that they wanted the war to end. But the end of the war will yet exclude them from society. fewer people will be able to make the same money they get on the contract. And the interest in what's in their heads is already getting smaller. alternatively of rehabilitation programmes, they will most likely be helped by the alcohol therapy experienced by returning from Afghanistan and Chechnya.
