TEASER: Russian Murderers Who Go to War and Come Home to Kill Again
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
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In Russia there’s a revolving door between prisons and the frontlines. What began as a Wanger program is now official: the Kremlin will pardon nearly any crime if the convict agrees to serve on the front lines in Ukraine. After a six month stint at war, murderers and rapists are free to return to the scene of the crime. Some come home to kill again.
On this episode of Angry Planet, New York Times journalist Milana Mazaeva is here to talk about what happens to Russian communities when criminals return to them after going to war. The first half of the conversation covers the articles and details harrowing stories of Russian murderers who became soldiers who became murderers again.
The latter half of the episode is about how hard it is to report from Russia right now, the incredible games of telephone Mazaeva plays to get the stories she does, and what’s lost when you can’t visit the place you’re reporting on.
Pardoned for Serving in Ukraine, They Return to Russia to Kill Again
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature |
| 0:05.1 | It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. After the production of the program died and after Wagner doesn't exist anymore, they have this new rule that they are serving until the war end. |
| 0:28.0 | Really? So you get out, it's not about surviving six months, it's you're going to war instead of being at prison. I need to re-check it, but let me see. |
| 0:41.4 | Meath it would make sense to me if you're if you're so hard up for troops that you're |
| 0:47.2 | emptying the prisons why not keep them there as long as possible right it was during the Wagner time, it was like six months, and now they are |
| 0:59.7 | have to serve until the end of the so-called special military operation. |
| 1:06.7 | So an indefinite amount of service because who knows when this special |
| 1:10.9 | operation is going to be finished? |
| 1:12.3 | There time to go back and then go back again, you know, how you call it, the kind of the vacation. |
| 1:19.2 | Leave, leave, military leave, yeah. But is the, are the convicts being used in a different role on the front line? |
| 1:27.0 | Do we have any sense of like what their job is? |
| 1:30.0 | I know that they're kind of seen as cannon fodder, right? |
| 1:33.4 | Yeah, that's the thing since they are usually |
| 1:37.3 | people who do not have any like special |
| 1:40.7 | skills, they don't, they are not military people. They have, they have to go through |
| 1:49.5 | this court very short training and then they go to the war and usually they are sent they they |
| 1:57.8 | sent to the front line and they called what was the name that was used for them? |
| 2:07.6 | The mid-storms or something like that, |
| 2:10.5 | that's how they call them. |
| 2:14.0 | The mid-storms? The mid-storm, meat, you know, like meat-storms. |
| 2:18.0 | Meats storms. |
| 2:19.0 | Meatsorms. |
... |
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