War world

Ivan Chistyakov from Western Siberia attacked two friends with a knife at a party, inflicting multiple wounds. The friends allegedly “discredited the Russian army”. Chistyakov was sentenced to two years and four months in a penal colony — the judge claimed the victims’ “unlawful actions” were a mitigating circumstance. Both victims were fined for “army discreditation”, having “made negative statements about the special military operation and the Russian-speaking population” in front of another witness.

Stabbing war doubters is still not officially encouraged, but courts are already commuting sentences on this basis. 

The stubborn ones run the risk of being not only stabbed, but outright deprived of civil rights — from being branded a foreign agent, a status that doesn’t really scare that many people at this point, to being sentenced to 15 years behind bars for “discrediting” PMC Wagner or mentioning Bucha.

The Chistyakov case and other precedents, such as legalising the transfer of prisoners to the front line, indicate that Russia is de-facto developing a new legal order. In it, the highest value to which both law-abiding citizens and the law itself should aspire is to justify or participate in a war of aggression. War is not only the absolute value of the Russian state, but its raison d’être, which makes any calls for peace, humanism or, God forbid, critical thinking look misplaced.

On paper, the Russian Constitution declares human rights to be of the highest value — no doubt an instance of negligence on the part of Investigative Committee chief Bastrykin and Minister of Justice Chuichenko. But creative lawyers, hand-picked for the presidential human rights council, among other places, have already begun clarifying what sort of human that refers to. Russia prefers to protect the rights of Russian speakers strictly in foreign jurisdictions, and we know that its chosen tool for this are shells and missiles. The rights of Russian speakers are fully secured once their town has been razed to the ground, as is the case with the “liberated” Bakhmut.

Lawmaking and law enforcement have also progressed in this direction. Any legal standard or precedent that is useful to the conduct of war is applauded. The latest example: Russian parliament is considering a bill that proposes to fine or imprison people for 15 days for “maps that question Russia’s territorial integrity” — that is, for instance, showing Russia’s internationally recognised borders. The MPs don’t bother with common sense: punishing citizens for topographical disloyalty could be useful, though even Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov does not know where Russia’s actual borders currently are. (Coming soon: Chairman of the Constitutional Court Zorkin tries to bring Putin an old map of Russia from 1991, where there’s no Crimea, and ends up in jail).

In history, there are many examples when the law was in thrall to ideology.

or the Nazi courts, which declared the Führer’s will to be the highest legal standard. Such legal systems usually have an inglorious end. The people of the country and the soldiers of a liberating army inevitably throw away the insane laws and dance on the ruins of a bunker or monument to yet another defeated dictator.

But Russia’s new legal system is unmatched even compared to these historical examples. Introducing war as the supreme value protected by law was pretty much an accident. Had Vladimir Putin’s hobbies during the COVID-19 pandemic involved stamp-collecting or golf (what a delightful hobby for an accomplished dictator), Russian law might as well have introduced the death penalty for stealing stamp collections or trespassing on golf courses.

The Putinist “elite”, from the Chairman of the Constitutional Court to minor-league party officials, are united in this. They have been ordered to become cannibals and drag as many people alongside them as possible.

What makes this case unique is that the Russian legal system, instead of protecting people, protects the government’s right to wage war, and does so without any discernible plan. The point of the war and its objectives have long been forgotten — and were never particularly clear in the first place. There is no “ideological Putinism” — nothing that can be put into words, despite the very talented attempts of Western analysts to “understand Putin’s enigmatic soul” through the works of Alexander Dugin. The Communists and even the Nazis justified the need to kill their enemies as best they could; in Russia, the reason for the current slaughter are random snippets of phrases (“Russians…”, “NATO is mean”, “all Nazis…”, “also Satanism…”) Yet everyone must swear loyalty to the war, no questions asked, even if it is just banditry taken to a state level. 

A cynic will say that Russia is now an extremely interesting subject for scientific research. 

Can parents raise their children telling them that the purpose of their life is to die in a war on foreign soil? Can Prigozhin, Kadyrov, and pro-war bloggers become a moral ideal, a role model for an entire country to follow? Can you make people forget their compassion and interest towards “unfriendly cultures and languages” for the sake of the “special military operation” and accept murder as the new norm?

These questions, among other things, concern the fate of the upcoming elections in September. Central Election Commission chairwoman Ella Pamfilova, formerly a liberal politician now calling for a crackdown on traitors within the country, has recently approved the official logo for the election day. It is the letter V in the colours of the Russian flag, meant to signify the unity of Russian political forces in support of the war.

Candidates and parties that do not support the killing of Ukrainians will likely be excluded from participating in the “democratic procedures” simply because the obligation to be in the pro-war camp takes precedence over the right to be elected for public office.

If you don’t support the “special military operation”, you have no rights at all, as the aforementioned Chistyakov case made plain.

On paper, the centrepiece of the September elections will be Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin running for re-election, and the same principle works here. Sobyanin, who did not praise the war actively enough, preferring to stay silent and only once having tea with people in camouflage for the camera, is now being punished by having to be a United Russia candidate. Muscovites are not generally big fans of the ruling party, so Sobyanin used to go for the “independent candidate” guise. But the days of liberalism and favourable treatment for Moscow are over: Sobyanin will now canvass for the party of war criminals. And the people brought to the polling stations to vote on bicycle lanes and landscaping will be offered to share the responsibility for the ruling party’s policy. Bloodroots urban development ahead.