Russian Siloviki Sent to North Caucasus Return Home Changed for the Worse, Aleksandrova-Zorina Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 25 – Over the last decade, Moscow has cycled soldiers and police from around the Russian Federation through the North Caucasus where many of them have acquired habits of mind and behavior they have been bringing back with them to their home regions elsewhere, another way that the violence in that region is bleeding back into Russia as a whole.

            The exact numbers of those who have passed through this experience is unknown – the Russian government does not publish statistics – but it is large; and the impact in places where police in particular have come home is therefore large as well, although it is seldom the focus of analytic attention.

            But when there are cases in which the police have exceeded their authority, it often turns out that they had earlier served in the North Caucasus where such excesses were not only tolerated but even promoted, Moscow writer Elizaveta Aleksandrova-Zorina says (kavkazr.com/a/30237437.html).

            And she adds that while she fears terrorists and Caucasus militants, she “personally fears and fears very much people in uniform, especially those who are returning from service in the North Caucasus” where they have become accustomed to kill without court hearings, investigations, or any explanation of the causes involved.”