It has long been known that in Russia a practice of extrajudicial repression is used against its own servicemen, including so-called “torture pits” — places of illegal detention where unwanted soldiers are held in inhumane conditions. People are treated like animals: without any formal registration of detention, without basic sanitary conditions, without the possibility to relieve basic physiological needs, including in the cold, while being subjected to regular beatings and humiliation. These facts are systemic in nature and are confirmed by numerous testimonies from relatives of the victims.
In many cases, such torture ends in the killing of servicemen. Within the Russian army, the term “zeroing out” (“obnuleniye”) is used to describe such extrajudicial executions — a euphemism for the physical elimination of a person without investigation, trial, or any legal procedure. These killings become a method of “solving the problem” of those deemed undesirable, those who refuse to follow orders, or those who attempt to assert their legal rights.
One documented case concerns serviceman Alexander Grigorievich Spalata, born on 06 March 1997, who was serving in the 428th Motorized Rifle Regiment (military unit No. 41867). His mother reported threats, illegal detention, and a real danger to her son’s life.
According to her, several weeks earlier Alexander called and said that he had been taken out of the combat zone and placed in a so-called “pit,” where he was held without any legal status. In these conditions, he was regularly subjected to physical violence. In one of the conversations, he directly stated that the command intended to get rid of him.
“He told me that the command is planning to get rid of him. At the moment, my son is not in contact, and I fear for his life and health.”
The serviceman’s mother also relayed her son’s words about direct threats from the command:
“From my son, I learned that the unit’s command accuses him of things he did not do, uses physical force against him, and also promises to ‘zero him out.’”
On 21 November 2024, the woman, together with a lawyer, filed an official complaint with the 121st Military Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in Donetsk (DNR). According to her, officials promised to bring her son within a few hours, but this never happened. She was given no reliable information about his whereabouts.
After returning home, she called the investigative department every day, but received only formal replies and promises to “look into it” and call back.
“I call them every day and ask: have you summoned my son, have you looked into it? <…> And from November 26 until today, my son has not been summoned, nothing has been done, no one has been questioned, and I am even afraid to think whether he is alive at all.”
The serviceman’s mother sharply criticized the inaction of officials and stated that representatives of the investigative bodies showed negligence and inhumane indifference, effectively ignoring reports of torture, illegal detention, and threats to life.
“Please help me, if anyone can help in any way. <…> A mother came all the way from a town in the Saratov region to the city of Donetsk, and this is how they treat her.”
This case is yet another confirmation that the practice of illegal detention, torture, and extrajudicial killings of one’s own servicemen in Russia is not an exception, but part of an entrenched system in which human life is treated as expendable.
Source: Telegram channel “NE ZHDI Good News” — https://t.me/ne_zhdi_novosti/4507