Editor's note: This interview was published by Ukrainska Pravda and is reprinted with permission.
Since the beginning of war in Donbas, some 4,000 soldiers and mercenaries from Russia have died in Donbas. That is the estimate of Elena Vasilieva, a well-known human rights activist.
In early August she
created the group called “Cargo 200 from Ukraine to Russia” in
social networks. Its name is a reference to dead bodies carried
across the border.
The name caught
attention of tens of thousands of people, and the group started
receiving information about regular army soldiers, officers and
former military who volunteered to fight and were killed in eastern
Ukraine.
Having collected
enough material, Vasilieva decided to come to Ukraine and see with
her own eyes what is happening here. She became the source of
information for hundreds of Russians women whose sons and husbands
secretly went (or were sent) to war. Vasilieva is the one who tells
them what military units of the Russian Federation took part in which
fights, and what to do if a soldier has not been in communication for
some weeks.
Ukrainska
Pravda: You have been in Ukraine for about two months, which has
coincided with cease-fire. What discoveries have you had here?
Elena
Vasilieva: Initially when I realized how many dead people there were
on both the Russian and the Ukrainian side, I set myself a task to
stop this carnage. This breaks down into many smaller tasks.
The
first one of them is to try to find and record what troops were taken
into Ukraine, where the dead people came from. They’re not given out
back to their relatives in Russia.
After
my trip to the anti-terrorist operation zone I tried to disperse a
number of myths. For example, that there are NATO troops here. They
aren’t here, you see. That the “Ukres” (Editor’s note: this is
a derogatory reference to Ukrainians used by the separatists and the
Russian troops) are evil fascists. To find the Banderites who eat
babies for breakfast, I went to the western Ukraine. I only found two
Banderites, in the form of monuments.
Along
the way I met many volunteers and saw that the whole of Ukraine is
burned by this war. And also, in different regions the wounded and
those who had been in captivity, regardless of each other told me the
same story about the war – about the Ilovaisk trap, about the
Buryats who fought on behalf of Russia.
This
diverged completely from what the Russian propaganda was saying. This
is why I included this in a movie: “Ukraine,
in search of truth,” which Odesa-based Channel 7 helped me to
make.
Now,
when the Russian mothers siege me with questions about their lost
children soldiers, first of all I ask them what unit it was and
realize that this unit fought in Izvaryno. It means that either this
man stayed on the battlefield and was buried there somewhere, or was
taken to Rostov region.
I
can never say for sure, but I follow up on directions and point to
where the search should go.
UP:
How do mothers stay in touch with you? How do they find out what you
do? The Russian propaganda is still strong, and many simply refuse to
believe that this is happening.
EV:
When your own child dies or disappears, mothers get out of their way
to look in different directions.
The
very group Cargo 200 was so explosive because in August, when it
appeared, quite a few people died and were searched for already.
Initially, I created the group to dump all the information there and
then analyze it.
But
in the very first week it was jammed: people started sending links
and started counting. After the first count we came out with the
figure of 1,000 dead Russians. Then the grapevine kicked in, and
soldiers, officers and their mothers realized what happened, and
information started spreading in military communities.
It’s
more complicated with remote corners of the country. In Russia still
not so many people use the Internet, not to mention the deep
provinces. But surprisingly, I started to get correspondence from
very small villages.
I
predicted that November will become a decisive month because all the
draftees who were sent into Ukraine disguised as contractors, have to
come back home, but they’re not coming back. And they’re recruiting
new guys now, basically to become cannon fodder.
Those
mothers who are sending their kids to the army, have to know this is
what can happen to them. And in Russia we have lawyers who are trying
to help the draftees to wiggle out of trips to Ukraine.
UP:
But it’s very difficult to regular draftees to wiggle out.
EV:
Very difficult, almost impossible. For the first two months the
draftee will be safe because he has to learn at least to handle the
gun. And then it gets difficult.
I
just received a silly, but pretty typical story. A mother is writing
that her son had three months left till demobilization. A man arrived
to his unit, saying “Sign this contract, it’s not real.” He
talked a few kids into signing this “not real contract”. The guy
is gone, the contract remains. Now they expect mobilization, but are
told that they’re contractors now. How do you break it? They are now
told they’re being sent to Ukraine, and they don’t know what to do.
UP:
Are they actually told they go “to Ukraine” now?
EV:
They are now. Until September we did not know for sure if people were
thrown in as cannon fodder. In the field they were shot either by the
Ukrainian side, or by the DNR (Editor’s note: Donetsk People
Republic, a self-proclaimed secessionist entity).
There
are a lot of complaints about the DNR from the military. They are
referred to as stoned and drugged. They have rocket-propelled
grenades in their hands and mortars, and they fire anywhere they
want, they don’t care who they’re shooting at, as long as they shoot-
this is how much bravado they have.
UP:
There are KamAZ trucks with equipment and soldiers coming to Donbas
from Russia every day. Do you get information about that?
EV:
I do, before they enter (Ukraine). Because when they come in, the
soldiers switch off their phones, which are then taken away from
them.
UP:
The information you collect, is it going to be possible to use in
courts, for example?
EV:
Of course. I do it intentionally to draw people’s attention to the
problem. You media is one thing, everyone knows there is war going
on. The Russian media are a different case. Many people still think
this is a civil war and there are no Russian troops. So now our job
is to stop this war by normal means.
UP:
As I understand, this is volunteer work. You come here at your own
cost and do not get paid for your work. What motivates you to spend
your energy, time and health to collect information?
EV:
I don’t know. I also thought about it. Maybe the bar of my sense of
justice is set very high. Another motivation is that I am head of the
organization “Forgotten regiment,” which was created in 2007 out
of former fighters of wars. When the Crimean annexation began, we
made a joint statement in our blog that this is Russian aggression
against Ukraine. Some members of our organization went to the Donbas
militia, and returned a couple of weeks later, saying that it’s very
gloomy out there, that “drunks are guzzling vodka” out there and
this is no defense of Donbas.
The
military share their information about this war all the time. They
talk in closed forums.
UP:
But they don’t counteract.
EV:
They do. You see, the problem is that Russia has severe censorship.
You can only publish something the Kremlin needs. Any variations on
the theme are shut up. I got a call from St. Petersburg, telling me
that in Kamenka there were wild scandals happening for weeks.
The
wives came out to a riot because lists of those who died and went
missing were put out. The wives raised a scandal.
Those
wives and mothers then break up into several groups. The biggest
group demands money: if we’re told to shut up, where is our money.
Only one woman was paid 500,000 roubles (about $11,000), whose son
was seriously wounded. Payment to the rest is under question.
UP:
Actually, it’s a miracle that those lists came out.
EV:
Yes. People were sent to the first assignment there, and never came
back. Then the second and third waves, and their wives and mothers
are starting to think, why do we need this?
One
soldier told me how he broke his own leg. He thought up a special
technique how to do it: he ties the leg around very tightly, applies
ice to make it numb, and then you can hit it hard.
Another
guy told me how he gave himself a huge burn on the hip using liquid
ammonia.
They
figure out ways. If the Russian media talked about these military
riots, the society would explode terribly.
UP:
The military don’t benefit from this situation: they and their
colleagues are sent out to die. Why do you think the military
commandment takes these steps and continues to send soldiers and
officers to war?
EV:
For example, every soldier of the Russian army, especially contract
soldiers, have $5-10,000 set off for their upkeep. For as long as the
person is alive or is not on the list of the dead (and this is a
military secret), the top commandment receives allowances for them.
Actually,
I am told that I am wrong, and there are 8,000 dead Russians, not
4,000. This is the figure given by one of the guys who takes “cargo
200” from Ukraine to Russia. I think this makes it clear that the
military have to defend themselves.
UP:
Are
you afraid to go back to Russia, to live and work there?
EV:
This is a difficult question. I am advised not to go. At any point
they can either kill me, or jail me, or send me to the nuthouse, cos
I am crazy, like the official channels say. But I would like to stop
this number of deaths, I am trying to do something.
UP:
What is the level of fear in general in you community. I mean, the
fear to talk about these things.
EV:
Those who talk openly, like I do, are no longer that scared. I
realized that I got tired of being scared. My flat has been searched
every half a year since 2005, they tired me out, and they have become
a part of my life. Be as it may.
This
is the kind of a situation where you understand your full
responsibility. However much you press the spring, I will still
bounce bounce back.
