KILLINGS IN ARMENIA POINT TO FLAWS IN RUSSIAN ARMY

The Moscow Times
Jan 15 2015

By Simon Saradzhyan

Like many others in the Armenian diaspora, I have been shaken by
the news out of the Armenian city of Gyumri where six members of
the Avetisyan family were killed. A conscript from a nearby Russian
military base had confessed to the killings and his gun and belongings
were found in the Avetisyans’ house.

I can only hope and pray that little Seryozha Avetisyan — who suffered
a wound in the course of this homicide and remains in grave condition
— overcomes the odds and lives on to fulfill the dream that I am
sure his parents nurtured for him when he was born six months ago.

At this stage, the information available in the public domain
doesn’t allow us to ascertain what might have caused the suspect —
who reportedly had been “on the radar” of Russian law-enforcement and
his brother had been convicted of murder — to commit such an atrocity.

When apprehended, the suspect could give no coherent explanation as
to what prompted him to shoot and hack seven people, ranging in age
from six months to 53 years.

We do not know whether the suspect — who had reportedly tried to
desert once before — had some underlying condition before being
conscripted or that appeared during the course of his service that may
have caused him to commit such a heinous crime. One way or another,
no sane person would have stabbed a small child with a bayonet,
which is what the suspect allegedly did.

Unfortunately, this is not the first case of a soldier going on a
killing spree when absent without leave within or outside the former
Soviet Union.

While a defense journalist at The Moscow Times, I wrote more than once
about uniformed killers, including one mentally unstable sailor who
had locked himself up in a nuclear submarine after shooting fellow
comrades-in-arms.

Some of these killings would have never been committed if the Russian
enlistment offices and the medical commissions assigned to these
offices did a thorough job of screening all conscripts. Others
would have not happened if violent hazing of conscripts had been
not tolerated.

Russian media have reported on how individuals with health issues or
with expunged criminal records would be served call-up notices just
because enlistment officers needed to fulfill conscription plans
assigned by the General Staff.

The Russian military and border guards should be commended for
quickly tracking down the suspect before he could cross into Turkey
and placing him into custody. However, it took the Defense Ministry
team only a few days to conduct an investigation and announce that
all those guilty have been identified. As disappointing are some of
the proposals on how to deal with the bigger problem, as they see it.

For instance, one ministry representative has stated the armed forces
might stop sending conscripts to Russia’s military bases abroad
because of the incident.

Should not the goal be to prevent soldiers from murdering people
in general rather than just people living in countries which host
Russian troops? If someone is prone to go on a killing spree, then
he should not be conscripted at all.

Russian laws bar Russian authorities from handing Russian citizens to
foreign governments for prosecution, but they also provide for life
in prison for those found guilty of committing murders of this scale
and cruelty. In my opinion, justice will be served, only, if found
guilty, the suspect is sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Armenians’ sympathies with Russia are well-known. In fact, the name of
the surviving boy — Seryozha — attests to it. One legend — that I
have read in Armenian literature — it that grateful Armenians would
name their children after Russian soldiers who fought on behalf of
the Russian empire to wrest control of parts of historic Armenia from
Persia and the Ottoman empire — that had oppressed their Armenian
subjects.

The soldiers would give their diminutive names when asked by Armenians,
and, hence there appeared numerous Seryozhas, Vanyas and Kolyas
in Armenia.

It is my strong hope that this horrible tragedy will not affect the
relations between Armenia and Russia, but it is my even stronger
hope that the Russian response will not be limited to prosecution of
the alleged murderer. Killing sprees by soldiers across the world
demonstrate that even fully professional armies sometimes fail to
weed out potentially dangerous individuals from their ranks.

But I still think there are steps that generals can take to reduce
occurrences of uniformed violence even if fully eliminating such
violence might prove to be a mission impossible.

These steps include rigorous screening of conscripts and monitoring
of active-duty servicemen to detect dangerous disorders as well as
zero tolerance for violent hazing.

Simon Saradzhyan is a researcher at Harvard University’s Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs.