Russia and its soldiers: the war in Ukraine

This page examines how Russia treats its own soldiers — before and during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine from 2022 — the psychosocial roots of that behaviour, how the Russian military changed over the war, and what happened in Bucha, including to children. It is the same state and army that sends the sons of its minority peoples — among them the peoples the Tatars live among — to die in disproportionate numbers.

Before the war: dedovshchina and a culture of violence

The Russian (and earlier Soviet) military has long been plagued by dedovshchina — literally the “rule of the grandfathers”. It is the institutionalised hazing of junior conscripts: a hierarchy by length of service in which second-year soldiers rule over first-year ones — from chores to beatings, torture and sexual violence. Human-rights organisations (e.g. Human Rights Watch) have described it as systematic abuse; by various estimates some 50–80% of conscripts face violence, humiliation or bullying. Roughly 130,000 young men are called up every six months. Such a system leaves the soldier brutalised and traumatised — and teaches him to pass the pain on.

The soldier as expendable material (2022→)

Since February 2022 the Russian military's hallmark has been the use of the soldier as expendable material: poorly equipped and trained infantry sent into repeated assaults (so-called “meat assault” tactics) to expose the enemy's positions and fire. To ease the manpower shortage, prisoners were recruited: the Wagner group, over 80% convict-staffed, used them at the battle of Bakhmut; by the British Ministry of Defence's estimate about half of the recruited prisoners had been killed or wounded by March 2023. After Wagner the state created the Storm-Z and Storm-V penal units — lightly trained convict formations used as disposable infantry (they became known in April 2023). A partial mobilisation was declared in September 2022. Casualties are concealed: applications to declare soldiers missing or dead were reportedly removed from court databases. The burden of the war falls disproportionately on minority regions.

The psychosocial roots of the behaviour

Analysts link this behaviour to a “downward” logic of violence: a soldier brutalised under dedovshchina carries the learned violence onward — onto those below him in the hierarchy, onto civilians and onto the enemy. Add a command culture that expects no initiative or care from below, and propaganda that dehumanises the adversary. The result is not accidental: a system that treats its own soldiers as expendable treats others worse still.

The military's evolution over the war

In February 2022 a swift blitz was planned: an airborne landing at Hostomel and a kilometres-long column toward Kyiv. It failed, and Russian forces withdrew from around Kyiv by the end of March. There followed a shift to a war of attrition — massed artillery in the Donbas. A mobilisation followed in September 2022, and in 2022–2023 the “meat waves” of Wagner and the penal units at Bakhmut. By 2023 the Russian army had adapted: deep defensive lines were built and the share of drones, especially FPV strike drones, grew. The war turned ever more into one of attrition and drones, in which the exhaustion of equipment is offset by mass and adaptation.

Bucha

Russian forces entered Bucha (near Kyiv) on 27 February 2022 and withdrew in late March; Ukrainian forces reached the town on 1 April. By local authorities' count 458 bodies were found in Bucha (by August 2022), 419 of them killed by violence. The UN human-rights mission and Human Rights Watch documented summary executions, torture and enforced disappearances; sexual violence was also documented. Russia's official position was that the massacre was “staged” — a “fake”, in the words of Foreign Minister Lavrov and UN envoy Nebenzya. The evidence does not support these claims: satellite imagery showed bodies in the same places weeks before the Russian withdrawal. Bucha was not an exception — in Kyiv Oblast alone over 1,300 bodies were found by June 2022. It is worth stressing that these crimes were not committed by an exhausted or desperate force: in the first days of the war Bucha held Russia's professional units — soldiers in their prime, with their best “Russian” equipment — not the later mobilised men or penal squads. The brutality came from the army's core, not its decline.

Bucha and the children

Violence was turned on children too. According to the Bucha-district prosecutor's office, children were fired on deliberately: soldiers opened fire on families trying to flee — including cars marked with the word “children” and white cloth — and on civilians' homes.

Individual cases are documented. The lead car of a fleeing convoy was raked with machine-gun fire, killing children and their mother; in another case a sniper firing on the family's car from the woods killed a child (CNN). In Vorzel in the Bucha district, soldiers threw a smoke grenade into a basement and shot a woman and a child as they emerged — the child died (Human Rights Watch). A teenage boy survived an attempted killing and can testify (PBS Frontline). Family members, including children, were forced to watch the crimes, and sexual violence reached minors (the UN human-rights office). Journalists also saw the burned body of a child near a playground.

The number here never matters — every crime against a child is a crime against life itself.

A wider crime against children, separate from Bucha, is the forcible removal of Ukrainian children to Russia: on 17 March 2023 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and the children's-rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova precisely for the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied areas to Russia. This abduction of children is not specific to Bucha but a pattern across the occupation.

Treatment: the start of the war and now

The treatment of soldiers has shifted over the war. In February 2022 many soldiers did not know they were going to war — they were told it was an exercise — and an officer's monthly pay was about 81,000 rubles (~$950). The partial mobilisation of September 2022 was unpopular and coercive. Instead the Kremlin turned to luring men with money: one-off payments rose from 195,000 to 400,000 rubles, and regional sign-up bonuses reached up to 3 million rubles (~$30,000) in places. The war became a source of income — especially for poorer regions — with a large “compensation” also paid to a dead man's family. But the substance of the treatment stayed the same: the soldier is expendable material. By the BBC and Mediazona, “volunteers” are now the largest category of the dead, and within five months of the September 2022 mobilisation the mobilised — together with recruited prisoners and volunteers — already made up about half of the confirmed dead; recruitment barely covers the losses. The shift is from a conscript deceived into war to a contract soldier recruited for money — but in both cases to an expendable resource.

Psychology: at the time of Bucha and now

The soldiers' psychology has changed too. At the time of Bucha (early spring 2022) many soldiers were confused and unprepared — some thought they were on exercises and did not expect resistance; instead of the promised quick victory they met demoralising resistance, which brought anger and an erosion of confidence. Yet the Bucha killings were not a chaotic outburst of rage: many civilians were executed while going about their daily routines, often bound. That points rather to a command “permission” and to the dedovshchina-brutalised soldier who carries violence downward and outward (Foreign Policy). Research stresses that atrocity requires no madness — it emerges from ordinary people within a permissive institutional and ideological system. Over time normalisation set in: in intercepted conversations the killings were treated not as exceptional but as ordinary. By now the force is dulled and inured by years of attrition, “meat waves” and penal units — brutality has become an expected routine rather than a shock (Atlantic Council).

The link to us

This is the same state and army that treats its own soldiers as expendable and sends the sons of its minority peoples — Buryats, Tuvans and others, among whom the Tatars also live — to die in disproportionate numbers. Understanding it is part of why the community values freedom.

Sources: Dedovshchina (Wikipedia); Russian Military Hazing Creates Brutal Soldiers (Foreign Policy); Russian penal military units and Storm-Z (Wikipedia); Assessing Russian Military Adaptation (Carnegie Endowment); Bucha massacre (Wikipedia); ICC arrest warrants (International Criminal Court).