Normal People
Russian military parade on May 9th, 2025 marking the 80th anniversary of Victory in the “Great Patriotic War”. Photo from the Kremlin.
In the early weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, intercepted phone calls between Russian soldiers and their mothers went viral on Ukrainian Telegram channels. The voices of 20-year-old Russian boys directly undermined millions of dollars of state propaganda as they called home to admit that there are, in fact, no NATO bases or “genocides of Russian speakers.” They tell their mothers and sisters what they are actually doing—entering homes, tying families up in their basements, and shooting them. In some recordings, mothers, sisters, and loved ones on the other end of the line can be heard crying, horrified. In others, girlfriends, mothers, and families egg the soldiers on. One Russian woman, identified as Olga Bykovskay, encouraged her soldier husband, Roman, to rape as many Ukrainian women as possible, just “don’t tell me.” Vladimir Putin did not order Roman to rape Ukrainians—his own wife did.
There are not 600,000 little Putins on the battlefield. There are 600,000 boys and men.
The narrative that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is merely “Putin’s war” relies on the dehumanization and alienation of the soldiers of the Russian Armed Forces. It envisions them as a huge mass of faceless individuals doing the bidding of a war criminal, obscuring the reality that these are completely ordinary people who are actually committing war crimes. By humanizing Russian soldiers—by looking past their political masks and into their faces—we can investigate a crucial question: what leads formerly normal people to commit the horrific acts that shape history, carrying out brutal orders and even exceeding them—in this case, raping, torturing, and murdering Ukrainians.
Some Ukrainians reckon with this question by nullifying the humanity of Russians participating in the war, referring to them as “orcs,” linguistically encapsulating the monstrosity of their invaders by comparing them to fictional humanoid monsters from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. It is perfectly understandable to do so—they have done things so senselessly horrible that many Ukrainians do not wish to dignify them with the title of human, as the label of “human” typically implies some capacity for morality or reason. However, if we want to reject the notion that complicity and perpetration of war crimes is inherent to a particular nationality, then we must engage seriously with the question of how and why ordinary Russian people come to commit such unspeakable atrocities.
Psychological studies, like the infamous Milgram experiment conducted in the 1960s, investigate human obedience to authority. In the experiment, ordinary participants were instructed by an authority figure to administer what they believed were painful electric shocks to another person. Despite visible signs of distress, a significant number of participants complied. The findings suggest that normal people, when placed under authoritative pressure and stripped of personal accountability, can do horrific things to others. This mirrors the dynamic among many Russian soldiers, who are normal people who commit atrocities because they are socialized to do so, and believe they will evade accountability.
Extreme political conditioning is also a critical factor in the behavior of ordinary Russians. A deep emphasis on military might as a source of national pride has facilitated a high degree of militarization within all levels of Russian society. Due to its critical role in securing an allied victory after 1941, the Soviet Union evaded all accountability for its collaboration with Nazi Germany via the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939, which divided Europe between Hitler and Stalin until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Instead, the Russian Federation appropriated the legacy of the Soviet victory for its own goals.
The Second World War has been deeply rooted as a key source of state-wide heroism and sacrifice within Russian society, solidifying the importance of military power in Russian national consciousness. Not only do children as young as 10 receive military training with automatic weapons and hand grenades in schools, but they are also ideologically indoctrinated with a glorification of war and unconditional idealization of the Russian Armed Forces. The Second World War is referred to as “the Great Patriotic War” (Великая Отечественная война), and war-related heroic behaviour, particularly presented through the sensationalization of historic war veterans, is presented as an admirable and attainable ideal for Russian youth. All normal children can grow up to become “heroes” by joining the military.
In Vladimir Putin’s first speech explaining the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he stated that the goal of his “special military operation” was to “denazify Ukraine.” This political strategy relies on overemphasizing the influence of a far-right Ukrainian political party that descended from one closely related to Nazism during World War II. Justifying force against Ukraine using this claim is completely absurd, given that electoral data starkly contradicts Putin’s claim. The right-wing political party, Svoboda, won 2% of the popular parliamentary vote in Ukraine’s most recent elections, compared to the AFD’s 20% in Germany and the National Rally’s whooping 37.1% in France, both of which espouse Nazi propaganda. Yet Putin has shown no intention of “denazifying” Germany or France.
By evoking unfounded accusations of “Nazism” in Ukraine, Putin mobilized a new generation of “heroes” who viewed invading Ukraine as a way to live up to the glorified image of their Soviet past. “Victory Day” parades commemorating the defeat over Nazi Germany are larger and more propagandized in Russia today than they ever were in the Soviet Union, as Putin’s agenda hopes to paint the Kremlin as an eternal defender against “Nazism.” As of April 28, 2025, Putin’s first condition for a ceasefire remains the “denazification” of Ukraine, demonstrating how his highly emotional rhetoric aims not to achieve a material goal but to sensationalize a repurposed past in order to rile up his population and shore up continued support of war. Notably, since 2008, the banners of Russia’s Victory Day celebrations have switched from reading ‘Never again’ to ‘We can repeat it.’
As a result of the intimately bound nature of Russian military power and its national pride, the many war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in past wars are concealed and denied. As such, current members of the Russian Armed Forces are emboldened to commit horrific acts with complete impunity.
For example, while well-documented, widespread evidence of Soviet crimes against civilian women has never been prosecuted. The Russian Federation, therefore, has no memory of reckoning with atrocities committed by members of its own society. This sustained denial has directly contributed to the absence of mechanisms necessary for historical accountability, thus making it far easier to indoctrinate children into believing their country can do no wrong––emboldening them to justify their horrific acts as “patriotism” with the tacit consent of the institutional memory, or lack thereof, of the Russian nation.
Although the contexts of Ukraine and Syria vastly differ, the international impunity Russia has enjoyed for its extensive war crimes during the Syrian Civil War directly contributes to this culture of military invincibility in Ukraine. Despite its decisive military and political role in supporting leader Bashar Al-Assad until his ousting in 2025, Russia has largely evaded international scrutiny and consequences for its involvement in war crimes. Western media and policymakers often focused more on ISIS, Iran, or Assad himself, sidelining Russia’s violence. Thus, the playbook that Wagner, a mercenary, Kremlin-linked paramilitary group, used to terrorize Syrian civilians during the civil war is now being used in Ukraine. There are extensive reports of Russia using cluster ammunition indiscriminately against Syrian civilian populations, with almost identical reports coming out of Ukraine. This lack of Western scrutiny of Russian war crimes in Syria therefore, sent a clear signal to Russian officials and those fighting for the Russian government: brutality can be committed without consequence.
Due to their lack of historic prosecution, war crimes committed by Russian soldiers are often broadcast by the perpetrators themselves. Many have documented and proudly posted their horrific acts on social media and Telegram channels. A notable example is a terror tactic coined “Human Safari,” in which Russian soldiers deploy “suicide” or “kamikaze” drones to fly around civilian areas of Ukrainian-controlled Kherson, targeting and “eliminating” anything that moves. Elderly women walking on the street, teenagers on bikes, cars, and ambulances have all been targeted. One soldier posted an image of a black van on Telegram with the caption “the hunt has started. Any black minivan must be destroyed, no matter where they are going.” A video shared by a drone operator shows two people peacefully strolling down a quiet street, oblivious to the flying grenade above them until it drops on their heads.
Not only do many Russians do these things proudly, but they do so with the tacit consent and direct monetary support of members of Russia’s populace. An entire economy has opened up in Russia for “exclusive” monetized footage of Ukrainians being murdered, interrogated, and tortured by Russians. The Telegram channel Arkhangel Spetsnaza (Special Forces Archangel, or АРХАНГЕЛ СПЕЦНАЗА) provides updates from the frontlines and sells footage of the torture and death of Ukrainians. For a fee between 500 and 1,000 rubles (roughly 6 to 12 U.S. dollars), the channel offers graphic photos and videos of killed Ukrainians, as well as recordings of their brutal interrogations. The channel currently has 1.1 million subscribers.
Intense dehumanization of Ukrainians is also perpetuated within military ranks. When interrogated by the Security Service of Ukraine, one captured Russian military serviceman told his captors that he was surprised by the kindness he was receiving in captivity—he was told that Ukrainians would “cut off his ears and fingers.” Ironically, the demonizing, fear-driven rationale that lieutenants use to motivate their soldiers reflects the Russian military's own actions, accusing Ukraine of the same torture tactics they themselves employ. The same servicemen also released a video discouraging other Russians from coming on “safari to kill Ukrainians,” a term reportedly used among Russian troops to refer to their war effort.
Many Russians who volunteer to fight in Ukraine are motivated not purely by ideology, but by salary. In late 2022, the aforementioned Wagner Group offered $8,500 per month for service. By comparison, the average monthly wage in Russia is about $787 per month. Prisoners were also among the ranks of Wagner’s mercenaries, fighting in exchange for a pardon. For the Russian citizens who were contracted with Wagner until its collapse in August 2023, the opportunity to murder Ukrainians was an opportunity for economic gain and freedom.
The intercepted calls also shed light on the prior financial state of soldiers fighting for the Russian Armed Forces—many soldiers describe in amazement the taste of Ukrainian ice cream and astonishment at brand-named clothes. Although no official statistics exist on the demographics of the army, Russian activists have reported that individuals from impoverished regions disproportionately make up those who have marched to the front since 2022. The fact that these regions are poorer than Russia’s metropolitan centers makes them fertile recruiting grounds for the Russian army, as military service provides a stable salary for those who have no problem going on “safari.”
Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that Russian society will pivot to prosecuting members of its own army. Militarized propaganda and fascist ideology have crept into every level of Russian society, from the belly of the Kremlin to elementary schools. The current regime is clearly far more preoccupied with prosecuting women who post stickers of Ukrainian poets on monuments than holding war criminals accountable.
The atrocities committed in Ukraine demand concrete and coordinated action. Russia has escaped consequences for its war crimes in Syria, the Central African Republic, Georgia, and Sudan, directly empowering the Russian army to commit atrocities in Ukraine. Often, evidence of war crimes is informally documented and publicized by the perpetrators––Russian soldiers record themselves murdering and torturing Ukrainians and post these videos on Telegram because they are proud of doing so.
These videos and posts should be collected as evidence in a coordinated effort to pursue accountability for the individuals who perpetrate them. Such is the case not only of Russian soldiers in Ukraine but of all people who violate the human rights of others under the shelter of state ideology. Increased funding for humanitarian organizations that record human rights violations in ways that encapsulate the ordinary humanity of the perpetrators serves to counteract the narrative that mass human rights violations are solely the responsibility of a handful of leaders. Russian dissidents, who oppose not just the invasion of Ukraine but Russian imperial ideology, should be more directly supported to fracture the image of one unified and untouchable Russian imperial state. This approach for Russia would actually serve to actually chip away at the fascist ideology and brazen militarism which pervades Russian culture.
A single soldier may not seem significant in the grand scheme of all the wars in the world. But that one soldier has the ability to murder entire families, to end bloodlines, to extinguish the light from a child’s eyes indefinitely. To understand how mass atrocities occur, we must humanize the individual perpetrators—not to absolve them, but to reckon with the truth that it is not just tyrannical leaders or “orcs,” but ordinary people, who commit the horrific crimes against humanity which shape history. Only then will we effectively understand and make meaningful efforts to dismantle the systems that turn ordinary people into war criminals.
Lora Tseytlin (BC ’27) is a columnist studying political science and economics. Her column covers human rights and authoritarianism in the post-Soviet region and Russian military operations in West Asia and the Middle East. She is originally from Seattle, Washington, and gravely misses seeing any signs of nature while in the city.