Philipp von Becker

This is its own kind of October surprise. slate.com/news-and-politics/…

The secret Azov prison discovered yesterday in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka, near Kyiv, is known in the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a “pit” (yama). Such facilities have existed in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, just as they have in the Russian army, for a very long time. This is a systemic phenomenon. The Ukrainian news outlet Strana published an article about these “pits” in the Ukrainian military. Below, I provide some representative quotations. “In each military unit, the pits took different forms — from ordinary damp basements in urban buildings or cellars in rural areas to actual pits dug two or three meters deep, covered with metal grates or loosely spaced logs. Initially, those most frequently sent to the ‘pits’ were soldiers who had committed disciplinary offenses — drinking alcohol, using drugs, fighting, or stealing. With the beginning of the full-scale war, however, the system of unofficial military punishments became even more widespread. This was particularly true after 2023, when the first wave of motivated volunteers joining the Ukrainian Armed Forces had dried up and the Territorial Recruitment Centers (TCCs) began widespread ‘busification’ — the forcible rounding up of conscripts for military service. In their efforts to meet recruitment quotas, military recruitment officers sent virtually anyone into the Defense Forces, including people with chronic illnesses, men with mental health conditions, alcoholics, and drug addicts. 🔴‘At our location, there is a place resembling a “pit.” In reality, it is just a small room with bars on the windows. Soldiers who, in the opinion of their superiors, have done something wrong are brought there. At night, guards rush into the room and brutally beat the prisoners. For example, a fellow soldier of mine simply asked to be sent to the medical unit because he was ill and refused to deploy to combat positions on a combat mission. He was thrown into this pit for three days. Every night, he was beaten, and several of his ribs were broken. The man who beat him was the pit’s permanent guard. He essentially serves as its resident torturer. The goal is to break a person's will and force him to obey any order without question. And, of course, to intimidate everyone else so that they would not even think about standing up for their rights or deserting their unit,’ a serviceman from one of the assault regiments told Strana. 🔴‘Military pits almost never have toilets. At best, a bucket is provided for bodily needs. Sometimes it overflows, but the prisoners are not allowed to empty it. The stench and lack of fresh air only amuse the guards. There are also actual cages outdoors. Being put in one is genuine torture. You cannot stand upright; you can only sit on a wooden platform, without even a blanket, exposed to the elements. People are reduced to an animal-like state there. They are beaten every night. After a couple of days of such abuse, anyone sent there is ready to do absolutely anything, including being deployed to combat positions with no “return ticket.” The prisoners who have been broken the most are assigned the most dangerous missions — places from which they are unlikely to return, sent under drone fire into the gray zones of the battlefield, or dispatched on the deadliest reconnaissance missions and assaults. People in these pits are psychologically broken by torture. That is why the system of “pits” continues to flourish. The army has yet to come up with another way to break people’s will,’ said Ukrainian Armed Forces Sergeant Vyacheslav V.” 🔴An officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Dmytro S., who spoke to Strana, believes that even after the current scandal involving Azov’s secret prison, nothing will change regarding the use of so-called “pits” — makeshift detention facilities used to punish soldiers. “We are being sent completely unmotivated recruits. Many of them are simply homeless people, alcoholics, or people with serious illnesses. At the same time, frankly speaking, the likelihood of being killed on the front line is high. Especially if your unit has been ordered to carry out an assault. That is why we have such an enormous number of cases of soldiers going AWOL (absent without leave) and outright refusing to obey orders. Going through official channels to initiate disciplinary or criminal proceedings is an extremely long and cumbersome process. More importantly, you lose the soldier — he ends up going through the courts and prisons. But you need fighters here and now. That is why soldiers are thrown into these ‘pits’ — to force them to obey orders and to serve as a warning to others. There have already been reports about abuses, beatings, and torture in certain assault units. Do you think anything has changed there? Fundamentally, nothing has changed. You can talk endlessly about human rights and design all kinds of oversight mechanisms. But if you are ordered to launch an offensive against some village while under drone attacks, you have to carry out that order at any cost. And to do that, you have to force people to go on the attack, even when they know they might be killed. That is why these ‘pits’ exist and will continue to exist as long as the war goes on. To get rid of the ‘pits,’ the war has to end. And if the war continues, the situation will only get worse — the methods of coercion are becoming increasingly sophisticated. This is also a strategic problem: commanders are becoming accustomed to solving problems through unchecked violence and lawlessness. And there is a risk that they will carry these practices over into civilian life once the war is over. The longer the war continues, the more acute this problem will become,” the officer said. Source: t.me/stranaua/253695

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