Source: Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of St-Petersburg

In Vladikavkaz we visited unit No.1 which had been accused several times by soldiers and their parents. The latter mentioned slave-trade, torture and the lack of medical assistance within the unit. Denis for example wrote: "My military service was like a nightmare. We were treated like animals. We slept on beds without mattresses. Everywhere in the barracks there were lice. My legs festered because of the dirt. I did not have time nor water to wash myself. The commander wouldn't let me see a doctor. Thus, I went to the medical unit without asking his permission, where I was hospitalized right away. However, I was told to leave the medical unit before my legs were healed. In fact, my legs still festered. I had lost 16kg at the medical unit. Now, I regularly fell unconscious, my head was often spinning and I had got a temperature of 35 degree Celsius. I thought of nothing else than food, I always wanted to eat. We were sold to the people of the town in order to carry out hard and dirty work for them." (14.10.99). Having received a letter from her son telling about all this, Denis' mother immediately went to Vladikavkaz. She witnessed there everything that Denis had been telling her. According to her verbal statement the soldiers are sold to local inhabitants for 50 Rubles.

All of this had happened in 1999. When we visited the mentioned unit in August, we soon realized that situation was still the same. The soldiers returning from war in Chechnya complained about inhuman treatment by members of the headquarter. The commander had called them "goats" and threatened to send them back to Chechnya. On top of this, not all of those who had fought in Chechnya were correctly registered in the armed forces' computer system - their names were spelled wrongly for example. Hence they often didn't get their pay and the time left for them to serve was calculated incorrectly.

We had been told about enormous losses. In one battalion there were 20 "weight 200"'s (military slang for coffin). One soldier passed out in front of our eyes and was brought to the medical unit. This soldier, actually, fell unconscious every day but no one ever thought of examining or curing him or giving him the possibility of early leave due to his health problems.

We accompanied him to the medical unit where we were shocked about the dirtiness and the lack of water that were dominating the scene. We discovered there a victim of torture: only just alive private Alexander Ermolaev. He was conscripted in the village of Baevka, in the Ulianovsk oblast. He suffered from the consequences of tuberculosis; before his conscription, he had been treated by a specialist. His health had drastically worsened during his service, but he was not given any medical assistance. He was coughing blood. When we visited him, he lost his memory (he wasn't able to remember his address) and he was suffocating. No one would help him or send him to a hospital.

We informed the commander in charge, the headquarter of the 58th army and the military prosecution office of Vladikavkaz of all of these facts.

http://www.soldiersmothers.spb.org/eng/Reports/nkhell.htm