Even Recorded Murders Won’t Turn Russia Against the War

The video is only a few seconds long. A Ukrainian soldier is standing in a small hole he likely dug himself, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He is told that he is being filmed by a voice off camera.

“Glory to Ukraine,” the Ukrainian says calmly. He is quickly shredded by bullets from multiple directions as the man filming says, “You bitch!” As the shooting subsides and the soldier lies lifeless on the ground, parts of his face now missing, someone else, a little farther off, can be heard saying, “What fucking glory to Ukraine?”

“Die, bitch,” the man filming reiterates, before the video cuts off.

The video is only a few seconds long. A Ukrainian soldier is standing in a small hole he likely dug himself, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He is told that he is being filmed by a voice off camera.

“Glory to Ukraine,” the Ukrainian says calmly. He is quickly shredded by bullets from multiple directions as the man filming says, “You bitch!” As the shooting subsides and the soldier lies lifeless on the ground, parts of his face now missing, someone else, a little farther off, can be heard saying, “What fucking glory to Ukraine?”

“Die, bitch,” the man filming reiterates, before the video cuts off.

The first public source of the video appears to be Serhii Sternenko, a prominent Ukrainian activist and wartime volunteer, though how the video was discovered is unclear at this time. (Sternenko understandably has not revealed his sources.)

The figure in the video was initially identified as Tymofii Shadura, a soldier from the 30th Mechanized Brigade, but days later, military experts pointed to Oleksandr Matsiyevsky, a territorial defense soldier. Matsiyevsky was eventually confirmed as the victim a few days later. Shadura remains missing in action, while Matsiyevsky’s body was returned to his family and buried on Feb. 14, 2023.

After his identity was confirmed, Matsiyevsky received the title of Hero of Ukraine posthumously.

The execution of prisoners is a war crime—and this is just one of hundreds of documented atrocities committed by the Russian invaders since the start of this war. But the crimes are rarely caught so immediately and completely on camera. Initial reactions to the video display how far gone the Russian public is.

Most of the supporters of Russia’s war on Ukraine have praised the video. The Ukrainian soldier’s defiance irked them, but they were equally irritated by the idea that POWs should be treated humanely. One social media channel dedicated to the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, infamous for its war crimes in Ukraine and elsewhere, criticized the video. Others quickly called them cucks.

When it came to civilian reactions to the video, some Russians were quick to blame the United States for the brutality of Russian troops. “This is what the Americans and Anglo-Saxons wanted,” one wrote. “You can’t stop it now.”

Just a few hours after that, the usual conspiracies about the video being a staged provocation began bubbling to the surface on social media and in the group chats I quietly monitor. This has fit a pattern since heinous Russian war crimes came to light in the liberated town of Bucha and other towns like it.

Wagner Group fans aren’t necessarily representative of the Russian public. But it’s a tendency that goes beyond just them. In spite of extensive verification of Russian atrocities, the answer is always the same: “We didn’t do it; it’s a plot to discredit us.” Or else it is silence. These non-responses are not meant to be logical. They appeal solely to the idea that Russians are innately virtuous, and the rest of the world is conspiring against them.

Denialism is not uncommon in times of war, from French atrocities in Algeria to American ones in Vietnam. What makes Russian denialism so egregious is that it has been enshrined into law by the government. Calling the war anything other than a “special military operation” is effectively illegal in Russia. Reporting honestly on the war and the atrocities that accompany it is similarly illegal. The small percentage of Russian citizens who have tried to publicly resist while remaining on Russian soil are being locked up. The majority shuffles on, complicit and complacent.

None of this happened overnight. Under President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin has marched toward fascism for years, and the general public followed.

The Russian pattern of denial and projection is a historic one. Even those Russians who admit to the horrors of Bolshevism and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror are likely to use excuses. As a child, I was told by Russian relatives from my mother’s side that revolutionary Vladimir Lenin was sent into Russia like a virus by the Germans, corrupting a happy and prosperous Russian Empire.

If it wasn’t for the dastardly Germans, the disasters that befell Russian society in the 20th century, and the horrific atrocities Russians perpetuated against other people and each other, would have simply never occurred, my relatives insisted. They could bring themselves to admit that the Soviets did terrible things en masse. But those crimes could never be Russian.

The concept of learned helplessness is applicable here, but it doesn’t quite begin to account for the sheer scale of Russian brutality. Stalin was a genocidal maniac on par with Hitler, and he was aided in this by an apparatus gleeful and enthusiastic about torture, starvation, rape, and murder.

Nazi Germany was eventually occupied and brought to its knees. The Soviets, of which the Russians were the dominant group, were meanwhile left to fester behind the Iron Curtain. To this day, there has been no genuine accountability for Soviet crimes. If anything, brutality paid off for most of the perpetrators. So why not continue?

There’s a reason civil rights organizations such as Memorial, shut down in the run-up to Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, have traditionally made the Russian majority so uncomfortable. It wasn’t just the Kremlin that came to hate Memorial for its fastidious documentation of Soviet crimes; much of the public resented its mission because it struck too close to home.

The rage unleashed on Ukraine is the rage of those Russians who take tremendous umbrage at the idea that the Soviet past should be decisively broken with. Ukrainians correctly pointing out that Stalin starved them? Wrong! Bad! Ukrainians seeing a future with the EU? Disgusting! Who do these ungrateful peasants think they are?

These are the tendencies of both violent imperialism and a society so thoroughly warped by its past that it shrinks away from accountability the way a vampire runs from sunlight.

Therefore, the murder in the video simply could not have happened. Or if it did, it was evil Westerners who twisted the arms of helpless Russians. Or, as another group of people will point out, “War is hell and bad things happen,” conveniently forgetting that the victim was cut down on his own land, having not invaded anyone, having simply defended his home.

Today, Russia is a cowed society, taking the easy way out of its predicaments. It’s easier, for example, to justify and excuse the video and the many other crimes it represents. Otherwise, you might have to grow, and growth entails pain.

In confronting these terrible facts about Russia, a country and culture I once loved, I keep going back to the Ukrainian soldier. He knew what was about to happen. He faced his killers with bravery and with the knowledge that his cause was righteous.

Death comes to us all, but not all of us are able to face the end knowing we did right. In that, the soldier’s last words, “Glory to Ukraine,” are not just a message of defiance, but also of hope. His cause will continue. As he lies dead, he has already won.

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