Olga abruptly dragged her index finger across her neck as she recounted the threats her husband made against her after he returned to Russia wounded from fighting in Ukraine.
“I will cut off your head and hands and beat you. I will burn you in acid,” he threatened her, she said.
Even before her husband went to fight in Ukraine, he was a violent alcoholic, Olga – not her real name – told AFP.
When he returned home seven months later, he felt even worse. And now he was a war hero, endowed with a sense of impunity and moral justice.
“He became even more radical,” she said. “He said he was untouchable, nothing could happen to him.”
– Domestic violence –
Long before Russia invaded Ukraine, human rights groups had sounded the alarm about the country’s dismal record in protecting women from domestic violence.
In 2017, lawmakers — with the blessing of the Orthodox Church — reduced sentences for Russians convicted of mistreating family members.
And the Kremlin below Wladimir Putin has argued in recent years that abuse within families should be solved by families, not law enforcement.
With the war in Ukraine, activists say an already widespread problem could now become even worse.
While there are no publicly available figures on the extent of violence committed by veterans, activists have identified a number of survivors.
The local media is also full of reports of violent crimes by former soldiers.
AFP spoke to two Russian women about the violence they suffered at the hands of war veterans in Ukraine. Both requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Their statements are rare given how the Kremlin has sought to honor veterans fighting in a war it portrays as existential.
Moscow has introduced new laws to criminalize criticism of the Russian army and its soldiers.
– ‘Ice cold’ eyes –
Olga’s life in her isolated Russian town was long marked by violence.
Her husband was an alcoholic who regularly raped and beat her, stole money and monitored her every social interaction, she said.
After an argument, he repeatedly asked for forgiveness, but then became violent again, she said.
When he volunteered for the army in October 2022, Olga hoped that being close to “Death and Tears” would calm him down and sober him up.
Their hopes were dashed. He returned from the front earlier than expected to recover from a shrapnel wound.
“The next night I had a nervous breakdown,” she said.
“He was completely sober, but his eyes were shining. His eyes were ice cold. He started insulting me,” she recalled.
That evening, tensions grew at home, and Olga called an ambulance to seek refuge, anticipating the moment when he would raise his hand to her.
“If you let me out of this vehicle, he will kill me,” she told the ambulance crew.
AFP independently verified the threats Olga received via text messages, as well as reports from human rights group Consortium that support the women’s statements.
– ‘Dreams of Justice’ –
Police took a statement from Olga and told her husband to leave but otherwise did nothing, she said – a practice human rights activists have denounced for years.
Her husband remained at large and was able to spend the equivalent of the 30,000 euros he received in compensation for his wounding.
The couple eventually divorced and Olga’s ex-husband returned to Ukraine months later, in December 2023 – but not before attacking her one last time and robbing her of money.
According to Olga, since her former partner left for Ukraine again, she has been thinking about the idea of holding him accountable – “dreams of justice,” as she called it.
The trigger was a television program she had seen about domestic violence. “It felt like they were speaking directly to me.”
The program prompted Olga to file a complaint with law enforcement and the telephone syndicate, seeking advice on how to protect herself.
The group’s Sofia Rusova told AFP she had received about 10 reports like Olga’s involving veterans in the last year alone.
She echoed warnings from other advocacy groups that the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine has exacerbated domestic violence in Russia and normalized extreme violence.
“The consequences could be felt for a decade,” she warned.
– “Will not be punished” –
Placing veterans on a pedestal – part of a Kremlin push to shore up support for the devastating conflict – made them feel above the law, she added.
“Women often tell me that their attacker said he would not be punished,” Rusova told AFP. “These men are flaunting their status.”
But this feeling among veterans is also rooted in the Russian justice system’s failure to combat domestic violence, she added.
“The system has sometimes failed to defend women, so these men believe that it will continue to fail women and that the state will be on their side,” Rusova said.
Regional media across Russia regularly publish reports on violent crimes committed by soldiers or former members of the Wagner paramilitary group who fought for the Kremlin in Ukraine.
While in some cases the defendants are given long prison sentences, sometimes they get off lightly.
In separate cases in the southern Volgograd and Rostov regions near Ukraine, two veterans were allowed to walk free after stabbing their girlfriends. One of the victims died.
The main difficulty in bringing them to justice is that Russia has limited mechanisms for prosecuting family violence.
In 2017, Russia decriminalized certain forms of domestic violence, classifying it as a misdemeanor rather than a felony, with reduced penalties.
Weak legal protections for women mean there is little incentive for law enforcement to pursue suspects – or for those among the victims to even report the problem, activists say.
This month, AFP asked the Kremlin for comment on numerous reports in the local press describing outbreaks of violence among veterans.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin recently met with Interior Ministry officials and the issue was not raised.
“This type of violence was not one of the problem areas,” he said.
– ‘Pure Horror’ –
The Kremlin has also advocated for the military’s prison recruitment drive to pave the way for dangerous criminals to enter society if they survive a months-long stint on the battlefield.
Rusova, of the Consortium campaign group, said several Russian prisons had confirmed to her that people convicted of domestic violence had been recruited to fight in Ukraine.
A woman expressed relief when she learned that her violent husband had been killed in Ukraine, she told AFP.
Nadezhda had to confront her abusive ex-husband, a veteran of the Wagner Group, when he returned from the front a year ago, even more aggressive than before.
The Wagner Group suffered tens of thousands of casualties in some of the bloodiest battles of the war before being disbanded by Moscow after its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a short-lived uprising.
When her former husband returned, he had a serious drug problem, Nadezhda said. But he insisted she give due respect to his service in what he considered an elite fighting force.
She said she struggled for months with feelings of shame and uncertainty about whether she should seek help.
After an outbreak of violence that left her fearing for her children’s lives, she finally fled to an animal shelter at the end of last year.
A sympathetic police officer helped her file a lawsuit, which, to her surprise, led to her ex-husband’s arrest.
“We had gotten used to the nightmare,” she said. “We lived with it. We thought it was nothing serious.”
“But now that we’ve processed it all, we understand that it was pure horror,” she said.
Nadezhda and her children are now receiving psychological care. But even though her ex-husband is behind bars, she is haunted by the fear that he might one day return and seek revenge.
“Still, you walk around and are afraid that he will jump out,” Nadezhda told AFP.
“I always feel like he’s out there with a knife. It’s just so ingrained in my mind.”
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