No Mercy for Russians!

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This post has been translated into other languages. French version (en Français), Italian version (traduzione in italiano). Portuguese translation here (em Português). Spanish translation here (en Español). Korean version (한국). Dutch translation here (in het Nederlands). Norwegian version (på norsk ).

This is one of the sickest, most messed up videos I've ever seen. I watched it once all the way through and I've seen bits of it since, but I don't think I can watch it clear through again.

WARNING! This video has very gruesome content! Extreme viewer discretion is advised! If you think you are going to get upset or worse by this video, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT watch it !

Bad reactions have been reported by those watching this video. So far, nausea (lasting up to an entire day), fear, rage, feeling disturbed and upset (in one case for months), inability to stop thinking about the video, flashbacks, facial flushing, shivering, chills, vomiting, nearly fainting, neck pains, crying, and depression (lasting up to a few days) have been reported. Psychiatric emergencies, lasing up to 24 hours, have occurred. One person said they will never be the same after watching this. Another was so traumatized by this video that they nearly had to go see a therapist.

Hospitalizations have occurred due to this video. When it was first shown on Dagestani TV, several people were admitted to the hospital with heart problems after watching the video. All were apparently released later.

If you think you are going to have a bad reaction, please reconsider whether you really want to watch this.

I am posting this video because it is related to the neo-Nazi beheading video that created such a storm on the Internets.

A much more important question is why the Russian neo-Nazis chose to execute the first man by (an admittedly botched) beheading. The answer lies in this video. Although most Americans know nothing of these videos, they were widely released in Russia, probably around the time they were shot.

One very famous video, chechclear, was shot in 1996 at the end of the first Chechen War.

The video above was shot on September 5, 1999, when a Chechen rebel group of 200 men raided from Chechnya across the border into Dagestan. A contingent of this group, numbering about 40, found a village, Tuhchar, or Tuhcharom, that was guarded by 13 poorly-trained Russian conscripts. Various sites on the Web claim that this group was led by named Salautdin Temirbulatov (photo), but that does not appear to be the case.

Instead, Temirbulatov is the man who beheaded the unknown Russian conscript in the famous chechclear clip.

This group was actually led by Emir Umar Karpinski, associated with the Basayev and Khattab factions.

Clearly outnumbered, seven of the 13 managed to run away and hid in the village, but another six were captured.

Five of them were beheaded*; a sixth got up and tried to run away but he was shot dead. The sixth one was a 17 year old, and the rebels offered him the charming choice of converting to Islam or being killed. He refused to convert and was then shot.

Here is the audio, translated from the Russian and Chechen dialogue, from the section of the tape dealing with one victim, Aleksey Lipatov, who pled for his life, and was then murdered:

Russian prisoner, just a kid, is lying on the grass....

Chechen with knife: "Turn around."

Kid moves a bit sideways...

Chechen off-camera: "LIE DOWN!"

Chechen takes the knife out and bends towards the kid...

Lipatov: "You don't have to cut me...I'll tell you everything..."

Chechen with knife: "What are you gonna tell me?"

Chechen off-camera: "Go ahead, talk..."

Lipatov: "I'll tell you where it's located."

Chechen off-camera: "Where is it located?"

Lipatov points towards a hill with houses: "There, in that house."

Chechen with knife: "What?"

Chechen off-camera: "What is in that house?"

Lipatov: "Weapons and ammo."

Chechen with knife: "Where? In that house?" Points.

Lipatov: "Yes from there."

Chechen with knife looks at his comrade.

Chechen off-camera: "He's lying..."

Chechen off-camera: "Lie on the ground."

Chechen with knife: "What else can you tell us?"

Chechen off-camera: "Where are the weapons?"

Lipatov: "What?"

Chechen off-camera: "The weapons and the ammo."

Lipatov: "On the top of the mountain."

Chechen with knife: "Where?"

Lipatov: "There on top." Points.

Chechen with knife: "Are you sure?"

Lipatov: "Yes, yes."

AK shots fired...Chechen with knife backs off and doesn't want to cut him...feels sorry for the kid:

"What do you want me to do?" in Chechen.

Chechen off-camera: "Just cut him."

Lipatov: "There, it's right there." Points.

Chechens yell: "Leave him alone and come back!"

A bunch of them yell at once. Gunshots fired from AK.

Chechens keep yelling: "Leave him alone...come back already." (They are referring to the other kid that ran.)

Chechen with the knife: "Turn around."

Chechen: "Take off your belt."

Chechens off-camera: "Come on, cut him up."

Lipatov: "You don't have to."

Chechen off-camera: "Just cut 'im up already."

Lipatov: "You don't have to, please..."

Chechen scum hits him with the belt.

Chechen: "All right, come on!"

Chechen with Adidas jacket: "Hands back!"

Lipatov: "Please don't."

Chechen (Adidas): "Hands back!"

Chechen (Adidas) hits Lipatov in the face: "I said hands back!!"

Lipatov gets hit with an AK.

Chechen off-camera: "Quickly, quickly."

Lipatov: "Please, let's talk..."

Chechen with camera: "HANDS BACK! You fuck."

Chechen: "Fuck the belt."

Rifle hits the kid.

Chechen off-camera: "Just fucking cut him already!"

Lipatov: "Please, I don't want to."

They wrestle.

Lipatov screams: "I DON'T WANT TO DIE! PLEASE!"

Chechens: "Cut him."

Lipatov cries.

Lipatov: "I DON'T WANT TO DIE, PLEASE!! You are very good people, please!"

Cameraman: "Yes, we are very, very good people...THE BEST."

Chechen: "Get the knife."

Chechen punches the kid in the head a few times.

Chechen with the knife: "Stop fucking hitting him."

Cameraman: "You're gonna live in Grave City."

Lipatov: "MOMMY! MOMMY!"

Cameraman: "Torture him."

Lipatov: "I WANT TO LIVE!"

Cameraman, sarcastically: "He wants to live!"

Lipatov screams...3 on 1, the Chechens attack him.

Lipatov: "Come on fellows...I just want to live."

Chechen: "CUT HIM NOW."

Lipatov: "Leave me alone!"

A Knife goes through Lipatov's throat. Lipatov kneels while getting butted in the head with an AK.

Chechen with knife to the guy with the AK: "What the fuck are you doing? Fuck off."

Chechen with knife: "I'll do this myself!"

A Chechen cuts Lipatov's neck, stabs him in the neck...over and over and over...Lipatov is dead.

A few months later, the group was decimated in a Russian-Chechen operation. Two Special Forces groups took place in the operation, the recently disbanded Chechen Vostok Brigades from the puppet Chechen government, and Russian Spetznatz Special Forces. The video released by the Chechens was used as evidence against those who committed the crime in order to track them down. Some say they were killed in Russian aerial bombings.

All of the Chechens seen in this video were killed sooner or later, so everyone you see in this video is dead.

This video is in four or five parts, and this is apparently part four or five. This video goes by various names around the Net, and it is usually found on a Russian forum, but all the commentary is in Russian. It goes by names like Dagestan, Dagestan Massacre, Execution of 6 Russian Conscripts in Dagestan, Rebels Brutally Execute Soldiers in Eastern Europe, Chechnian Beasts, etc.

This particular video, though shot in 1999, seems to have only made it onto the web in a significant way about July 2007, a year ago.

Anyway, these videos were released on the Net and widely viewed by the Russian public. This served to arouse even more rage against the Chechens, especially due to the fact that these guys were conscripts. Chechen apologists argue that Russian conscripts have done all sorts of terrible things to Chechens, both fighters and civilians.

They also say that this was just one commander and doesn't reflect the views of others.

That's probably true, but none of that avoids the conclusion that these wars, which started out being relatively fairly fought, are now descending into unspeakable brutality on both sides. Chechen apologists say that this is what happens to you when you lose your whole family, or at least some members, to the Russian military.

There's probably hardly a Chechen family that has not had a relative killed or brutalized by the Russians. The logical consequence is a bunch of guys with mountains of rage and nothing to lose, combined with an increasing emphasis on radical Islam. The horrible Beslan School Siege was also an expected outcome of this Hellish war.

The Chechens have also blown up some airliners full of civilians. Prior to the school siege, some Chechen women in suicide vests, all war widows and clearly distraught, staged a hostage crisis in a Moscow movie theater. It ended with Russian agents storming the place and spraying knockout gas into the theater, killing a number of hostages.

Tony Ward's The Case For Chechnya, from the New Left Review, is highly recommended and sums up my position. Despite the horrible descent into terrorism (to be honest, on both sides) the Chechen cause of national liberation should still be supported.

Sadly, the Russians have killed most of the more moderate leaders, most recently Aslan Maskhadov, who was actually a reasonable fellow. But even Maskhadov had been getting more militant as the horrific war dragged on.

The Russians never had a right to conquer Chechnya in the first place, and it took them about 60 years to conquer the place - they started around 1805 and finally defeated the Chechens around 1863. During this period, Shamil was the legendary Chechen commander. Even then, Chechens never accepted Russian rule (which was originally mostly just nominal) and there were repeated rebellions, even during the Soviet Era.

When the Nazis invaded Russia, many Chechens, along with most of the other people of the Caucasus, went over to the Nazis, not due to a love of Nazism, but because Hitler cynically promised them independence, although we should also note that many people of the Caucasus did fight for the USSR.

Whether Hitler was really going to give them independence is much in doubt, as Hitler used this same ruse with the Ukrainians, and they were clearly intended to be genocided in Generalplan Ost, not given independence at all.

In 1944, Stalin reacted to this with fury, deporting whole ethnic communities on trains away from the front near the Caucasus. Conditions on the trains were horrible, with little food or water available. Whether this was intentional or not is not known, but many Chechens - men, women and kids - died en route to Siberia.

When the Chechens were finally allowed to come back over a decade later from the labor camps (where they were reportedly the most rebellious spirits of them all) they found that much of their property had been taken over by their Christian neighbors.

This is part of the homicidal backdrop to the seizure of the North Ossetian Beslan School by Chechen and Ingush terrorists. Christian North Ossetians had seized much of the Ingush's property during the decade in which they were deported along with the Chechens. Memories are long in this part of the world.

Although the war has tapered off considerably with the installation of a new pro-Moscow government in Chechnya, it continues to sputter on. There are only about 8,000 Russian troops in Chechnya, down from 60,000 as late as 2005. There are probably about 2,000 guerrillas still running around in the mountains.

Most Chechens are probably still pro-independence. In recent years, fighting has spread across the whole of the North Caucasus to Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia. There have also been many attacks in Southern Russia just north of the Caucasus.

What does all this have to do with the neo-Nazi beheading? As I said, those beheading videos aroused immense nationalist rage in a wide spectrum of Russian society (The Russian peace movement to end the Second Chechen War is very small, unpopular and often persecuted) and clearly it drove the ultranationalists into a frenzy.

The videos and the war itself probably drove the whole ultranationalist movement, giving them fire and legions of new members. In the communiqué attached to the Russian neo-Nazi video, the group demanded that all Caucasian natives be thrown out of the Caucasus and that the Caucasus then be granted independence. They also demand that all people of the Caucasus and "Asians" be thrown out of Russia proper.

Seeing how whipped up and crazy Russian Slavs got over these videotaped beheadings, I'm sure that the Russian neo-Nazis in their famous video beheaded Shamil Odamanov, a Muslim and a Dagestani (from the Caucasus) as retaliation for the beheadings of Russian conscripts by Chechen Muslim Caucasian guerrillas.

Otherwise, I'm not aware that Nazis had much a thing for beheadings. It's pretty much a Muslim thing, and their preference for it goes all the way back to Mohammad (It was his favorite way to kill people).

It's kind of sad that people are so worked up at the Chechens for chopping POW's heads off. To the dead person, it really doesn't matter how he died.

The Russians regularly murdered all sorts of Chechens in cold blood - 12 year old boys, relatives of rebels, on and on. They did sweeps through whole parts of the country, rounded up every male of fighting age and sent them to camps where they were tortured, often to death. There are mass graves all over the country, and some estimates are that Russia has killed 20% of the population.

For this reason, many young Chechen males joined the rebels because they figured the Russians were going to come after them sooner or later anyway.

This is an interesting discussion of these beheading videos, comparing them to child porn and asking why child porn is illegal to so much as look at it, but this stuff is not, considering that brutal homicide is arguably worse than child sex abuse.

*In this video, the Chechens are laughing, carrying on and yelling "Allahu Akbar!" the whole time. They slowly slit the soldiers' throats halfway, so the victims remain alive and suffering for some time.

Even with their throats partway cut, some are still moving around, trying to crawl, flopping around on the ground, moving their heads around, wiping their eyes and making weird noises out of what's left of their vocal tracts. The victims' are screaming, "Stop! Let me go!" in Russian.