Five Colonels Make A Ruble

Russia spends billions on corpses.

I read aboutkilled Russian officers (colonels are the most common lately in the news) and I can't shake off the feeling that it’s all about the same person. Almost everyone has Chechnya and Syria in their biography. Some also have Georgia in 2008. And now — some in Chornobaivka, some in Popasna, some are even identified months later by DNA.

They bring that DNA home, bury it with honors, give orders, medals and other tokens to widows, shoot into the air, make stupid pathetic speeches, and go home with a sense of accomplishment, having managed to drink a couple of glasses for the repose of the soul of their comrade-in-arms. And forget him the very next day. Except for the widow, no one else will ever remember or cry. Yes, and the widow, perhaps, in the depths of her soul, will be glad that she is now a free woman with a dowry in the form of a payment for the loss of a breadwinner. As for the breadwinner, he, perhaps, had time in the last seconds to think whether all this was worth his life, but he could not understand anyway.

In the summer, I worked on material for Novaya Gazeta about two graduates of the Minsk Suvorov Military School who died in July on opposite sides of the front — Colonel of the Russian Army Alexei Gorobets and Colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleh Makarchuk. One died in Chornobaivka, the other in Vinnytsia. I looked for their classmates, studied the lists of graduates, and caught any information that would appear on the internet. So, the mother of the deceased Russian colonel, Nina Gorobets, wrote a letter to the website of the graduates of the Suvorov Military School. The letter seems to be usual at first — thank you for writing about my son, thank you for the memory, thank you for the condolences. And then — a long complaint about the command, which for 13 years kept Gorobets as a colonel and did not give him a general rank. She lists in detail: he fought in the first Chechen war, and in the second Chechen war, and in Syria, but he died as a colonel, they didn’t appreciate him enough, scoundrels.

And then a schoolmate of both colonels, who is now fighting for Ukraine, said to me: “Don’t you understand why he stepped on my land? Everyone wants to become a general. Although he could put the report on the table and retire as a colonel. But he really wanted to become a general and went to kill — including the Suvorovites in my country.”

And really, he could. And the rest too. I specifically read the biographies of the killed Russian colonels. All of them were 45-50 years old. That is, everyone already has a seniority. More precisely, had. And everyone has served up to a full-fledged military pension. At the same time, the age isn’t that of a pensioner, they could retire and finally begin to live. Find a “civilian” job, spend time with the family, and fall asleep every night in your own bed. Without any desertion, scandals and escapes — just retire. Moreover, all of them have already fought in fierce senseless wars and know very well that in a war the life of both a private and a general is not worth anything, because stray bullets do not care who they hit. But they didn't retire. Because everyone, like Gorobets, rushed to Ukraine for the ranks of generals. But they did not receive them even posthumously.

And in fact, they did not go there for combat surcharges to the military pension. I used to think that, maybe, for each war separately, they are charged something later. But no, all combatants have the same pension supplement: 3,481 Russian rubles, no matter how much they fight. That is about 50 dollars. Fifty bucks for the war. If you survive and live to retire. Of course, you can save this fifty pennies and not spend it, and then it comes out to $ 400 a year, you can go to the campsite in Teberda. As in the old joke about Raskolnikov: “Well, yes, I took only 20 kopecks from the old pawnbroker, but five old women make a ruble!”

By the way, since we started counting other people's money here, let's calculate how much these corpses will cost for the Russian budget. In March, Vladimir Putin announced a figure: for every serviceman killed in Ukraine, his family will receive 7.42 million rubles. This is 125 thousand dollars, given the current exchange rate. According to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the losses of Russian troops since the beginning of the war amount to more than 52 thousand people. We multiply the number of those killed by the amount of the payment from the state and we get 6.5 billion dollars. And the war is not over yet, the last colonel is not buried. You can imagine how many roads, schools, hospitals could be built for six and a half billion, how much expensive Zolgensma medicine for children with SMA they could buy, how many life-saving surgeries they could perform for those who may not live to wait for their turn under the quota of the Ministry of Health. But they prefer the “special operation”. This means that nothing will ever be built there. Five colonels make a ruble.

Iryna Khalip, exclusively for Charter97.org