Instead of visiting the grave
How a Siberian woman saved her husband from being recruited by the Wagner PMC and saved approximately 30 other lives, although not everyone was happy about it.
Natalia Dzhanieva was one of nearly 30 wives and mothers, which withwe arrived From all over Siberia, they marched to the walls of Correctional Colony No. 14 in Toguchin to protect their men from recruitment by the Wagner PMC. She learned that communication with the prisoners via Zona-Telecom was unavailable, and her husband, Maxim, was signing documents to participate in the military operations in Ukraine. He intended to "help the family": earn some money and be released in six months under an amnesty. Natalya immediately wrote in the women's chat: "I'm coming." Others also got ready to leave.
After some time, Maxim finally left the prison colony. He is now in a correctional center (UFITs), where conditions are as close as possible to those of a "free" prison. Complete freedom is still a long way off, but the strict conditions of detention are a thing of the past.
The couple told NeMoskva how differently men and women reacted to the opportunity to "fight and receive amnesty" and what this led to.
Little nothings of life
"I went swimming with him today, alive, and didn't bring plastic flowers to his grave."“, Natalya shared joyfully.
"I can't really explain everything yet, I feel like a complete retard. Just so you understand, at the store they ask me, 'Sign up with your phone,' to pay for my purchases. Where do I sign it?! Let's do it in a week, when I've figured things out."“- asked Maxim.
It was a chaotic first conversation. They called each other again afterward, in snatches, answering questions via voicemail, as they both had more important things to do. They wanted to focus on the little things of life: visiting their two daughters, renewing outdated documents, going shopping, eating ice cream, and swimming. A little more, and none of this might ever happen.
They met almost half their lives ago, but were never together:
— If you say we "lived," then we didn't live at all. We started being friends, then I got pregnant when we were just kids—he was 16, I was 17. Then a year in the army. He came home and started using drugs. Nine months in a rehab center. While he was there, he got involved with a drug addict. They had a child. And then he came back home, and after all that, I accepted him. When he was already in prison, I went to the pretrial detention center, and he fell on his knees: I love you, I forgive you. That's how it was... We didn't really live together; I was always waiting for him to come back from somewhere.
Natalya is a medical worker. She asks that her field and location of work not be published. Her superiors sometimes call her a "future luminary of science," sometimes slander her: "She got involved with a prisoner, had a prisoner's child, drags the child to a prisoner, and now she's appeared on television because of him." She herself has often regretted her choice of life with a less-than-successful man, but ultimately, other feelings outweighed her. Now she feels she can't leave him alone with this life: he doesn't know it at all. Natalya laughs: even though he's 30, he's "still 22"—that's how old Maxim was before his trial. He received a sentence of over 12 years for possession and attempted distribution of narcotics. He served eight years.
Save can't be left
"Yours agreed to go to war.""—that's roughly what Natalia heard in November, through the grapevine." Then, suddenly, Zona-Telecom stopped working, but there were no official reports of the reasons.
"We have a community [of prisoners' wives and relatives]. When I heard he'd agreed, I said, 'Girls, do what you want, but I'm going tomorrow.' 'I'll go with you,' 'I'll go with you too,' was the response. I didn't ask anyone for anything. I said, 'Girls, whoever wants to go will definitely go.' I gave money for gas; some didn't have any, and some were from remote villages, and it was impossible to leave. Some people stopped by to pick them up. So, to say I organized anything would be wrong." — Natalia clarifies.
It's hard to say now what was the more compelling argument for them—whether fighting for the lives of their husbands and sons "for company" had become less terrifying, or whether they'd realized the most important thing: they'd waited and waited for their men to come home, packed packages, saved their last money for visits, and now they might never see them again. They also wanted to unravel a mystery: why, here in the wild, were they encouraged to be proud of the heroes and defenders of the Fatherland, while the future heroes themselves were recruited secretly, without the opportunity to discuss such an important decision with their families? So the women went. They headed for the colony with one thought: to save their men from war and death.
Few people behind the fence were planning to "save themselves." On the contrary, dozens of prisoners were determined to earn money and gain amnesty. If they survived.
Maxim agreed to sign the contract on the third day. Before that, he'd been thinking about it, weighing the pros and cons.
— At first, I thought it wasn't worth it. Because, well, at first I started getting the adrenaline, then I thought: if they kill me, who cares, it's not that scary. What's scarier is if you come back and spend the rest of your life saying hello to sparrows [after a concussion]. For the rest of your life, let's say, you won't be able to go to the toilet or eat, and, say, your legs will be blown off or something. And you'll still be alive. Then your relatives will just watch and cry for the rest of their lives. That's the only thing that stopped me. And then I thought: I can create a normal future for my children—yeah, so what? If I survive there or not, the doors will be open everywhere for children, even without exams, even in the military.
In line and under lock and key
News of the possibility of joining the war arrived just as it had in hundreds of colonies across the country. At first, rumors of convict recruitment circulated throughout the zone, but few believed them: rumors, mostly fantastical, are constant in the colonies. The rumors continued, and prisoners would say among themselves, "I'm going," "I'm going too."
Maxim left a long visit at the end of October to find the Zona-Telecom phones disconnected and notices posted announcing the indefinite suspension of visits. A few days later, the entire prison colony was gathered at the stadium—even those he considered too embarrassing to interact with. The staff were worried about how to gather everyone in one place, considering the inmates included both particularly dangerous and "outcasts." A mass brawl could break out. Prigozhin allegedly ordered them: "Gather everyone at the stadium, give them an hour, let them cut each other up, kill each other, so that everyone is there by the time I arrive in an hour."
"He wanted to land on the grounds by helicopter, but the terrain wouldn't allow it. So that evening, they herded everyone into the stadium, turned on the lights, and no one understood what was going on." — Maxim recalls. — There were about a thousand people. And then we saw a military helicopter flying overhead and landing near the camp. About 10 minutes later, Prigozhin walked in. He gave a speech that's been posted all over YouTube. "War is hard, World War III... If you've never held a machine gun in your hands, you're right for us. If you like gouging out eyes and cutting off ears, you're right for us. Out of 100 people, 30 will remain healthy, some will become disabled. But 200 rubles a month, and then freedom." Like, think about your loved ones, your children might not get into college because of you, otherwise everything will be different. You'll start life anew. And everyone rushed there, running, the line stretched until the morning.
They signed the contract deliberately and "for company," for other reasons. For example, his ex-wife filed for child support for a prisoner, and the amount had already accumulated to a considerable amount—over 700 rubles. He had no means of paying it, either now or in the future. He imagined that new court proceedings awaited him immediately upon release, and he immediately signed the contract. Whether he earned enough to pay the child support, or whether the debt to the child will never be repaid, remains to be seen.
The contract was signed by the "family members" [a group of prisoners who stick together and share a common life]: "I'll go"—"Well, then I'll go too." The kitchen workers quit, as did the workers from the shoe factory. The deadline for completing the order was pressing—other prisoners had to be urgently trained, although shoemaking isn't something you can teach in a day. People with no culinary skills were also hastily recruited as cooks.
Maxim still doesn't understand the motives of those who served more than two-thirds of their sentences—freedom was just around the corner—but they enlisted. Some went to earn money, others "were simply tired of being in prison, and there was some kind of freedom there."
They cleared out one barracks for potential fighters and locked them in. They were "dragged" one by one to a Wagner PMC employee, who helped them fill out forms and handed out contracts for signature. There was still no contact with the outside world, but Maxim's thoughts were already there, "behind the tape." But then something unexpected happened. Women intervened.
- I believe that no one has the right..., — Natalia reasons. —Many people say: look, they'll dress us well, feed us well, if only they'd give us stronger bulletproof vests. They say it's okay to kill others, as long as they don't kill themselves. What kind of ideology is that? No, no one has the right. The court sentenced them [to imprisonment], and that's it, they don't owe anyone anything anymore. Yes, that murderer, that one committed some other crime, but they've already been punished. And he [Maxim] is a drug addict. Those who haven't taken anyone's blood from anyone should certainly not have to atone with blood. Maxim's drug use—he killed himself, that's his own business. He killed his future, he killed his child's childhood. I told him about it, I don't hide it. He's very ashamed, he's very upset, but nevertheless. And then I called [human rights organizations]: tell me what I can do, where can I go? I said that I would go to the gate, I wouldn’t let them in, whatever they would take them in – armored personnel carriers, I would lie down under them, I wouldn’t let them in, I wouldn’t give them up, I’ve waited too long, they have no right!
Not cargo-200
- She has the right to decide my life! — Maxim recalls his first reaction to his wife’s arrival and the “women’s revolt” outside the prison. — I swore so much! This [participation in military operations] would have been for the good of everyone, even if I hadn't returned, it would have been for the good. But they're coming back from there, they've already stopped by to tell us they're dying out of stupidity. They told us to sit in the trench, go to the toilet there, and not stick our heads out. I stuck my head out, crouched down in a clearing—and that's it, and they say they're putting out sniper fire, heads just bursting like watermelons. Well, that's the kind of death there is. They're asking for trouble, and that's what they get. Is this war even necessary? Well, we need to defend our homeland, yes, we do, but when and under what circumstances? No one is attacking us; if they had, then yes, but no one has.
That morning of November 4, wives, mothers, sisters, and other relatives tried to find out for sure whether their men had enlisted in the Wagner PMC, and if so, under what laws. They weren't told "yes" or "no," but were instead asked to submit a collective request. And at the end of the meeting, someone called the police for allegedly holding an unauthorized rally.
Everyone who had relatives visiting was released from the separate barracks. Most were disgruntled, as they had already made their decision, and now their decision was being "changed" for them. The authorities demanded that Maxim tell his wife not to visit anymore. Six months later, he was transferred to a correctional labor camp at the Federal Penitentiary Service. With some caveats, this life could be called free: prisoners can communicate with their families on their cell phones, go to work, go shopping, and, after their probationary period, stay with their families on weekends.
— They simply got rid of him, such an “eyesore”, — Natalia assures. — I believe that our arrival, even if it was just 20 people, is alive, healthy, and walking this earth. Our arrival was a huge achievement. We may not have saved even 20 people, but it was a huge motivation for others, that they too can save their loved ones. That they shouldn't be afraid to move forward. And so we weren't afraid, and we went, and now our loved ones are alive, and he's free, and we finally went to the river for a swim today, instead of bringing plastic flowers to a grave. And those who didn't come with us, or who went but said, "Don't expose me, I won't be filmed"—I know some of them, unfortunately, who have already received 200.
Maxim has four years left, but he plans to apply for parole. In the very first days after arriving at the Federal Penitentiary Service, he boasted to Natalia: "I've already planted flowers here, now I need to help put together a library."He no longer complains about decisions that were made for him.
Illustrations: neural network
