Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 7 – “Friendly
fire,” the term used to describe combat losses from the gunfire of one’s own
side rather than the enemy, is not often encountered in Russian media. But it
is a real problem among the siloviki where training often turns so violent that
those entering it are killed or left as invalids as a result.
Anton Voronov, an MBK journalist,
sheds some light on this subject that for obvious reasons the authorities do
not want to talk about and that the courts are reluctant to take up. His interviews
with the family members of victims suggest that the problem is widespread but
he provides no statistics (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/druzhestvennyj-ogon-kak/).
Some of this violence appears to be
a subset of the dedovshchina that has plagued the Russian military for a long time
where more senior soldiers attack more junior ones or members of one nationality
or religion attack those of another. And some of it appears to be a kind of
initiation of trial by fire that has gotten out of hand.
But what is probably the most
important aspect of Voronov’s article is his use of the term “friendly fire” because
it suggests that within those the regime must count on to defend itself are
fissures that have turned violent and could easily do so again, thus opening
the kind of fractures that reduce unit cohesion to almost nothing.
If that is the case and if this
phenomenon is as widespread as Voronov’s interviews suggest, this is another
reason to think that the Putin regime’s last line of defense may be far less certain
than many believe – and that a truly horrific example of “friendly fire” losses
could trigger something much larger and more dangerous.
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