Teletype — “And Three Days for Plunder...”

War · August 12, 2024

“Russians return with trophies from Lviv.” Austro-Hungarian cartoon, First World War. Chamber pots are clearly visible on the cart; flush toilets had not yet entered ordinary use.

“Why did they have to kill the cows?”

“Because you can’t send them to their mothers in Rubtsovsk by SDEK.”

A quotation from the expanses of the Internet.

“Looting is the essence of Putin’s regime, and the army, as the real professional soldier General Denikin wrote, is the backbone of statehood. As the state is, so is the army.” — Vladimir Pastukhov

Seventy-five years ago, Article 15 of the Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949, established that parties to a conflict must at all times, and especially after an engagement, take all possible measures to protect the wounded, sick, and dead from pillage. The convention classifies unlawful, arbitrary, and large-scale appropriation of property not justified by military necessity as a grave breach.

Looting has accompanied military operations since ancient times; however, according to the author, while the civilized world abandoned it with the adoption of the Geneva Convention, Russia was untouched by this progress.

History

The word “looting” supposedly entered general usage during the Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648. In the age of primitive warfare, the enemy’s property and even family members were regarded as perfectly lawful trophies that could be seized, sold, or exchanged. Theft in this context served as a kind of compensation for risk and a supplement to “wages.”

Things were not much better in antiquity. Yet gratuitous cruelty toward an enemy was already condemned by some thinkers. During the late Roman Empire, the Christian Church began publicly opposing war crimes committed with the sanction or tacit consent of secular rulers.

There was also a kind of “regulation” of plunder in the Pentateuch and the Quran, as well as unwritten traditions under which, for example, a city might be handed over to the victorious army for plunder, but only by a special order of the commander and for a limited time.

The trial of the knight Peter von Hagenbach before a special tribunal of the Holy Roman Empire in 1474 is sometimes described as the first attempt to civilize warfare — a Nuremberg trial of its era. Acting as a kind of gauleiter, he practiced and allowed his subordinates to commit murder, rape, unlawful taxation, and large-scale confiscation of private property from the local population.

Later, the question of responsibility for violations of the laws and customs of war repeatedly arose before the twentieth century, but almost all peace treaties concluded at the time contained amnesty provisions under which violations of law generated by war were routinely consigned to oblivion.

During the Second World War, war crimes and crimes against humanity were documented as having been committed by countries of both the Axis and the anti-Hitler coalition. After the war, the victorious coalition created international military tribunals to hold the political and military leadership of Germany and Japan individually responsible for violations of international law.

At the same time, the victorious Allied forces of the anti-Hitler coalition were not subjected at those trials to claims or charges of war crimes. Only after the war, in 1949, was a convention adopted protecting civilian populations from looting and other unlawful acts during war regardless of the army whose soldiers committed them.

Looting in the Russian Empire and the USSR

In Russia, looting was legally treated as a military crime. It was prohibited by such acts as the Council Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of 1649, Peter the Great’s Military Regulations of 1716, the Field Criminal Code of 1812, the Military Criminal Statute of 1839, and the Military Statute on Punishments of 1868. In most pre-revolutionary normative acts, however, the concept itself was not even defined.

The first Criminal Code of Soviet power, adopted in 1922, contained an article entitled “Looting.” It defined the offense as “the unlawful taking, in a combat situation, from the civilian population of property belonging to it, using the threat of military weapons and under the pretext of necessity for military purposes, as well as removing for selfish purposes items belonging to the dead and wounded.” The crime was punishable by imprisonment, with or without strict isolation, confiscation of property, and execution. The 1926 Criminal Code of the RSFSR, the new Regulations on Military Crimes of 1927, and the Criminal Code of 1960 retained the norm.

The author nevertheless states that no substantial judicial practice for this offense developed in Soviet Russia and that looting became widespread.

Babel, while serving in Budyonny’s army during the Civil War and making notes about robbery, reproached himself: “I took nothing, although I could have. I make a poor Budyonny man.”

“One can be indignant as much as one likes about the looting of Putin’s army in Ukraine,” Vitaly Ginzburg wrote in 2022, “but it is worth remembering history. During the Second World War looting was elevated to the level of policy at every level. A soldier was allowed to send home up to eight kilograms of loot each month. For officers, the scale was measured in crates. Commanders looted by trainloads. And this stopped only in 1954. Looting is also a kind of motivation for servicemen whose Motherland supplied them with expired rations.”

“By restraining looting and violence only to the extent that they threatened army discipline, while introducing organized forms of looting and violence, Stalin created something like a nationwide mutual responsibility for immorality, finally reducing the idea of internationalism to phraseology in order to deprive the nation of the moral right to exercise freedom,” recalled war veteran David Samoilov in his General Diary (1977–1989).

The article states that Zhukov took from Germany large quantities of furniture, dishes, weapons, works of art, valuables, and other trophy property for his personal use.

Roland Thoms, a resident of the notorious German town of Demmin, recalled Russian soldiers who mercilessly tortured and robbed local inhabitants: “Both their arms were covered with wristwatches; that was the first thing they stole.”

Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand, a young Jew from Ukraine, writes in his diary about a lack of order and discipline in regular units: poor rations, lice, routine antisemitism, and endless theft. He relates that soldiers even stole the boots of their comrades.

The 1996 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation did not include a separate criminal punishment for looting; depending on the circumstances, such acts were classified as theft, robbery, or armed robbery. N. A. Petukhov, chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, wrote in a memorandum during discussion of the draft code: “Russian servicemen at present are almost constantly participating in various conflicts and combat operations ... it is necessary to determine their responsibility for disobedience or evasion of military service in combat conditions, abandonment of the battlefield, voluntary surrender, looting, violent acts against the local population and prisoners of war, and other offenses which under combat conditions may entail especially grave consequences.” The article argues that, despite such remarks, looting and other war crimes were in practice decriminalized in the new Russia.

Veterans of the Chechen War said that looting and robbery very often occurred during so-called “mopping-up operations”: “People are taken out of their houses, armed men enter and simply take everything they need. They can see that the people live poorly. But robbing during a war was not considered shameful.”

One such “liberator” later recalled: “I brought home a stolen tracksuit. I told my wife then that it had been issued to us. I couldn’t say I had stolen it. But it wasn’t really possible not to take it either, because everyone was taking things. As they say in the police, ‘If he doesn’t drink, he must be informing.’ If you don’t take the tracksuit, you aren’t part of the common arrangement and people can expect trouble from you.”

Chechen-war veteran Dmitry Florin, now living in Finland, writes that checkpoints supposedly established to inspect documents were in reality places where “tribute” was collected. There were few roads, and Russian units blocked all of them in the mountains. A sign was screwed on: “What are you staring at? 50 rubles — and go!” Later they were asked to remove it because some superior had seen it.

The article says that theft in Russia occurs not only during military operations but also during disasters. After the 2010 crash of the Polish Air Force aircraft carrying the presidential delegation, in which President Lech Kaczyński and most of Poland’s senior military command died, the widow of one victim reported that someone was using her husband’s bank cards. It later became known that three OMON officers had allegedly been detained in Russia on suspicion of stealing money. The Russian Interior Ministry press service denied the claim and called it “blasphemous and cynical,” but soon afterward a criminal case was announced against four conscripts who had been standing in the security cordon on the day of the crash. They were detained after foreign bank cards were found on them. Three had previous convictions. The suspects confessed and were later convicted.

Two months later, the widow of the head of the National Bank of Poland filed a complaint with prosecutors because her husband’s gold watch and cufflinks had not been returned. Relatives said that the objects were already missing when the body was identified.

In October 2011, two complaints reached prosecutors in Warsaw concerning the disappearance of a wedding ring and a gold signet ring from the dead. In both cases relatives stated that photographs of the bodies still showed the items, but that they were never later handed over.

Another case of alleged theft is probably familiar to everyone, the article says. In 2018, Russian border guards seized three Ukrainian naval vessels in the Kerch Strait while they were traveling from Ukrainian Odesa to Ukrainian Mariupol.

A year later the ships were returned to Ukraine, and the article says the world learned of the consequences of what it calls a pirate attack.

Ukrainian prosecutors reported that all ammunition, documents, small arms, and even sailors’ personal belongings that had been aboard the ships were missing.

Radios, satellite-communication stations, and radar systems disappeared from all three vessels, and installed identification and weapons systems were removed or damaged. From one boat, the article lists missing fire extinguishers, lighting devices, an emergency buoy, an inflatable motorboat and raft, magnetic and gyrocompasses, equipment batteries, a toilet, and the galley stove. From another it lists a ventilation hood, flow-through water heater, and the waste system for removing sewage from the head.

The article says the world was shocked by what it saw, but that most Russians appeared not even embarrassed. Ukrainian statements were, of course, declared “nonsense”; online users reproached Ukrainians with comments such as “they begrudged the toilet,” and when toilets were placed in front of the Russian embassy in Kyiv, Russians, according to the author, held a similar action in Moscow near the Ukrainian embassy.

“The USSR took 2,885 factories out of Germany.
Zhukov took four kilometers of fabric, 29 statues, 50 carpets, and eight bayans out of Germany.
Russia took medical equipment, a skating rink, a fountain, playgrounds from Mariupol and began removing paving stones.
Paving stones!
They managed to repeat it.
The occupiers are getting smaller.” — Telegram channel “City of Fools”

“And another thing. They steal. They steal everything. It is difficult even to imagine what they do not steal. We have never seen theft on such a scale — from children’s toys to a box of partly rotten vegetables.” — Letter from occupied Kherson

According to the author, the apogee of looting was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The article says Russian soldiers openly called stolen property “trophies” and “lawful booty,” boasted on video about what they had stolen, and that their wives offered “trophies” for sale on Avito with explanations such as “my husband brought it from the special military operation.”

“Today I spoke with someone close to me who lived through the occupation of Bucha from the first day to the last,” writes the author of the Telegram channel “warship… DONE!”. “In today’s conversation one phrase struck me: ‘You know, sometimes it seems as though the whole war was conceived only so that they could steal as much as possible. They looted, looted, and looted. They dragged away everything they could from our Bucha.’”

The article comments that, in this eyewitness’s impression, killings, rapes, and destruction were the most terrible things but still secondary, accompanying factors; the main thing was to appropriate someone else’s property with impunity.

“Kherson is ours!” the occupation authorities declared after seizing the city, the article continues. And the first thing they began to do was steal everything their eyes fell on — in “their own” Kherson.

During the invasion, seizure of farms and theft of grain allegedly became systematic. Grain and other agricultural products were removed by barges and sold in third countries. During the occupation of Zaporizhzhia region, the article says, occupiers looted local factories, taking machines, presses, and other equipment to Russia; what could not be removed was cut up for scrap metal.

The article cites the New York Times as describing the looting of Ukrainian museums by Russian forces as the largest theft of art since the Second World War.

It says Russian forces stole tens of thousands of works of art from Ukrainian museums, from Scythian gold to avant-garde paintings.

According to Ukrainian prosecutors and the museums themselves, the article states, more than 15,000 works of art and objects of historical heritage were stolen in Kherson alone.

More than thirty museums in Ukrainian cities were looted or completely destroyed, the article says.

From the Popov estate, it adds, a marble toilet was carried away along with saws and a screwdriver.

If looting became state policy on occupied territories, the author asks, what can be said about ordinary soldiers?

Thanks to Belarusian postal services, the article says, the whole world learned about looters from the city of Rubtsovsk: their faces appeared on surveillance cameras and their addresses remained in the postal database. About two tons of allegedly looted goods were sent to that city alone. Almost half a ton belonged to the “record holder,” Evgeny Evgenyevich Kovalenko, who sent home tools, tents, equipment, and clothes. The Internet, the author writes, is full of photographs of military vehicles abandoned by Russian forces during the retreat from Kyiv, packed to the roof with belongings and with washing machines, toilets, and carpets tied outside. The pockets of corpses, the article says, were stuffed with money, watches, gold, and silver spoons; one occupier allegedly died embracing a water heater.

Offices were robbed of office equipment, ATMs were broken open, and shops were emptied, with the contents later sold in occupied territories and in Russia. Private homes were not ignored either. Footage appeared online from cameras in an apartment-building entrance in a Kyiv suburb, showing soldiers forcing apartment doors. Private houses were entered as well, and heating equipment, microwave ovens, washing machines, and plumbing fixtures — toilets included — were taken.

Reading lists of items stolen from Ukrainians who were fortunate enough to return to their homes in Kherson and around Kyiv, the author says, creates the impression that the “liberators” had never before seen elementary household items routinely used by citizens of developed countries.

In Kyiv region, the article says, occupiers sometimes stole only the upper part of an electric kettle and left the base and power cord. They also removed wireless video cameras and installed them in their own homes, after which, according to the author, the Internet laughed at footage from the thieves’ private lives uploaded by the original camera owner.

Everyone has probably heard about the raccoon and the children’s toy train, the author remarks.

The raccoon stolen from Kherson Zoo, the article says, is apparently still being divided among Russian looters. The reason is simple: the Telegram channel about Kherson’s most famous “trophy” was monetized successfully. A quarrel therefore broke out over the loot, in which one group of looters allegedly stole the raccoon from another.

A doghouse was seen tied to an abandoned truck marked with the letter Z.

Among other lists of allegedly stolen property posted widely online after the liberation of Kyiv region and Kherson, the article says, everything edible was consumed by hungry occupiers — including ornamental fish from ponds and even dogs.

“What is happening in the occupied Ukrainian territories resembles not so much a war as a pirate boarding action or a wild Polovtsian (Pecheneg) raid of the kind that has lodged so deeply in Putin’s soul. Those who wage war this way are not a regular army but a rabble. Even the Soviet and Nazi armies fought looting as best they could, although not always successfully. In the Russian army it has been put on a conveyor belt and is apparently regarded as an additional means of motivating personnel.

Such an army, by definition, cannot remain combat-capable for long and will decay in the course of the war, calling into question the achievement not only of the Kremlin’s strategic goals but even its tactical goals in this criminal adventure. There are no genuine contract soldiers in the sense of professional servicemen. There is a mixture of ‘wild geese’ (professional mercenaries) and untrained, deceived peasants who were handed a contract like a quarterly bonus. It is an explosive mixture that turns the army into a wandering den.” — Vladimir Pastukhov

Soldiers quartered on Russian territory behave not much better, the article says. Residents of border districts of Belgorod region who were evacuated because of shelling complained to the governor after returning that soldiers “live in our houses, behave disgracefully, toilets and houses are fouled, personal belongings and property are stolen.”

And they wait at home. Not for the fighters, the author writes: the fighters are providers; while they are there, the family is fed. And if they are “lucky” and the soldier is killed, the family can buy a new Lada — or at least he may bring back a sack of potatoes and a couple of cubic meters of firewood.

Widows and mothers, the article claims, rejoice at “gifts” stolen from Ukrainians and sue one another over death benefits and inheritance: a mother sues a wife; a father who took no part in raising his son for twenty years and suddenly reappeared sues the mother he left with a small child.

The author argues that under Putin Russian regions have been reduced to extreme poverty, without wages sufficient for a decent existence. Men from poor villages and towns therefore go to war for what are presented as fabulous salaries; once abroad, even if not in the richest country in the world, and armed, they naturally begin stealing whatever is left unguarded. In the author’s characterization of Russia’s “parallel reality,” the concept of “looting” has historically been displaced by the concept of a “trophy.”

Despite the abundance of photographic and video evidence online, the article says, “vatniks” continue to insist that “it’s all fake” and “we aren’t like that.”

The author asks these patriots: does theft not flourish in Russia? Is Russia not placed around the 150th positions out of 219 countries in crime-rate rankings cited from the UN and other international organizations?

How, the author asks, can one assume that people who steal whatever is poorly guarded in their own country will not steal when they find themselves in another country with weapons in their hands?

The author says it would sound plausible if people regularly heard of Russian soldiers being convicted for looting — that such cases certainly occur but are suppressed and offenders punished. Instead, the article says, only awards are heard about and facts of looting are completely denied. It asks how one can believe in a total absence of robbery and theft by a people in whose homeland ballpoint pens, shoehorns, and beer mugs have long been chained down and shops attach antitheft devices even to butter.

And, the author asks, how can everyday looting and theft be absent in a country where top officials rob their own people and army, and diplomats leaving an embassy building supposedly leave behind only bare walls?

Looting, the article continues, is dangerous not only to the losing side. It harms the victorious army itself first of all: it undermines military discipline and reduces combat capability. Once soldiers become looters, the army begins to decompose; discipline quickly falls; commanders become obstacles; bribery of higher-ranking officers appears; easily acquired valuables buy relief from duties, guard shifts, and hard labor; drunkenness and debauchery flourish; fences for stolen goods appear; the ethics of the criminal world take over. Such an army cannot fight effectively.

Probably as a result of the first six months of the full-scale offensive and mass theft — which was declared “fake” but could not have been unknown to the Russian command — an amendment introducing the concept of looting into the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation finally entered into force in September 2022. The amendment provides for punishment of up to fifteen years’ imprisonment.

Only another year later, in October 2023, the article says, was a Russian soldier convicted of looting for the first time — and even then only because the amount was especially large. “Steal, but do not overdo it,” the author jokes, “and observe subordination: a subordinate should not steal more than his commander.”

The author says no further cases come to mind. Apparently, therefore, all the other Russian soldiers do not steal.

A story told by Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko

“A Kyiv resident stole a car to save his family.

He saw a car near a shop with the keys inside. For two hours he watched it, waited for the owner, and the owner did not come. Then he took his family and drove to Vinnytsia. When he arrived, he found a telephone number in the glove compartment and called the owner.

‘Forgive me, I stole your car. I saved my family,’ he said.

The answer is astonishing:

‘Thank God. Don’t worry, I have four cars. I evacuated my family in one. I left the others in different places with the keys in the ignition and my number in the glove compartment. People called back from all of them. When there is peace, we will meet. Take care of yourself!’”

By the way, the article asks, did you know that Ukrainians themselves punish looters? Those caught in the act are tied to a tree with their trousers lowered and beaten with belts and other improvised means.

© Teletype.in / Cloudflare USA · © https://teletype.in/@letspeaking