Snatched Up from Streets, Sick, Young Men Are Not Too Sick to Catch Bullets

Putinists will deny everything I write, but the reality speaks for itself

Courtesy of Travel Weekly 

If you don’t look, you won’t see it. That is what Russia’s fascist leader, Vladimir Putin, counts on. Russians are good at not looking and so, they see little — or, even if they see, they can’t stop to focus on the terrible because they are late for the ballet, for the theater, for the opera.

St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater is the main theater for opera and ballet in the city. I preferred the Maly Theater just because it was smaller, and tickets were more accessible. Never an aficionado of this form of cultural expression before going to Russia, the closest I ever got to ballet in the U.S. was when I fell in love with a ballet dancer when I was 16. 

Ballet is still not my favorite, but there is something about opera that has all of the right elements of magic to carry me away to places inside I never knew existed. My personal favorite is “Chio Chio San,” otherwise known to the world as “Madame Butterfly.” So overcome — and there really is no other word that can be found to capture what I felt — by this ballet that when I got married the first time, in a traditional, big American wedding in Freehold, New Jersey, my wife-to-be walked down the aisle in the church not to the Wagner’s traditional Bridal Chorus but to the Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly.

From 1994 to 2022, I went to the ballet or opera a few dozen times. It was just something to do on a gloomy evening when you wanted to escape life or celebrate it. This is probably why Russia’s theaters today are booming. Russians, despite their support for the war and Putin’s lunacy, are seeking to escape. This leads us to the basements.

Courtesy of Pond5

Contrast this image with the magnificent scene on the stage of The Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. As Russians, willfully ignorant of the facts of this war and what is taking place with the men in the country, sit blissfully staring at the stage being carried off to anywhere but “here,” Putin’s private army, Rosgvardia, is storming dormitories, theaters, malls, nightclubs, and even colleges and snatching up anyone they deem “capable of serving.”

Early in the morning of October 23, the building of one of the hostels near Moscow was literally surrounded by Russian Guard buses. About a dozen people entered the building — employees of the department and the military registration and enlistment office. They entered the rooms without knocking and, without introducing themselves, demanded that the men provide passports and military ID cards.

“I didn’t even have time to wake up,” recalls 21-year-old Radomir (the names of the conscripts and their relatives have been changed for the safety of the heroes). — Nobody explained what was happening. They took me and my neighbor out of my room, and out of the entire dormitory — up to seven people of military age, those who had not yet served. We were forcibly put on a bus and taken to an unknown direction (One Day Call).”

I lived in Russia during the Chechen wars and recall seeing young men accosted at metro stations on their way to work or meet friends. Parents learned of the disappearances of their sons when they didn’t return at night. The boys were forcibly sent off to Chechnya to kill innocent civilians and fulfill their patriotic duty. The criminality of the government, the frustration for which was expressed in the vicious murder of Chechens, was done for the “glory of great Russia.” This is how many, as they filled theaters and lost themselves in the opera and ballets, regarded the wars with Chechnya.

The entire conscription campaign is carried out according to the principle of “conscription in one day” — if a person ends up in a military registration and enlistment office, in the evening he is already at the assembly point before being sent to a military unit, military law experts Alena Savelyeva from the law office “Kaloy.ru” told the BBC. ” and a lawyer for the human rights coalition “Call to Conscience”, who requested anonymity.

Men of military age are grabbed on the street, in the subway, shopping centers, and they come to clubs and workers’ dormitories for them. People who do not live in Moscow and work on a shift basis are registered in the capital (One Day Call).

In the case of Radomir others he saw being illegally processed into the war, he was medically unfit to serve in the army. He has heart issues and problems with his spine that lead to horrible headaches if he spends too much time doing physical activities. The military authorities and the doctors in their service disregard the findings of medical examinations. Regardless of ailment, everyone is fit to serve — fit to catch bullets.

Another young man, Mikhail, with severe asthma, was picked up in a raid, and despite his explanations of why he couldn’t serve., He refused to sign the “military list,” which signifies his agreement to serve in the armed forces. He was told that whether he signed the “permission slip” or not, he would serve nonetheless.

“In previous years, raids took place mainly towards the end of the draft. But now this is just a fabulous record,” military law lawyer Alena Savelyeva from the Kaloy.ru law office told the BBC

“There was a whole basement of people there with Mikhail,” notes military law lawyer Arseny Levinson. He helps Mikhail’s parents challenge his conscription in court (One Day Call).

All that has been written here is truth. It is the reality unfolding in the country, beyond the packed theaters and full restaurants in Moscow and St. Peterburg. Putinists will at first say I have no idea what I am talking about. They ignorantly write stuff like, “Too bad the author knows nothing about Russia.” Such people are idiots. When they are Russians writing such stuff, they know that I am right but don’t want to admit the truth to the non-Russians. They lie to “protect glorious Russia.” When it is dummy Trumpists writing that I am clueless, they are just idiots who should be ignored and pitied.

There are still a lot of fun things to do in Russia. It’s winter, and as I look at a local online newspaper, I see the beautiful ice skating rinks. Oh, how I would love to be skating away my afternoons under the silvery-gray sky of a snow-bedazzled St. Petersburg.

The magic of the city, of the operas and ballets, is powerful. There is a moment in the ornate theaters, just before the curtain rises, and when hushes and then silence replaces the nervous din of the crowd, when everything is ready for the magic to unfold. With the lights turned down and darkness complete, the lone cough being the only indication that you are not alone, the tap-tap-tap of the conductor snaps the musicians to attention. All eyes are on him, waiting for his magic wand to cut through the air and to command the bassoon, the violin, or the cello to life. 

It is in that moment, when the cacophony of the practicing musicians ends, and the precision of the music expressed on the page aligns itself with the dreams and aspirations of the spectators, that Russians, really anyone, struggling to hide from Russia’s latest version of the truth, find the power, even excuse, to forget about the basements of young boys and men being illegally sent to a war no one wanted and no one can end.