When I say Russia is a “Cargo 200” state, that’s not a figure of speech. It’s literal...

When I say Russia is a state of "Cargo 200", that is not a figure of speech. It is literally the embodiment of what Aleksei Balabanov depicted in his well-known film, which later became a cult classic. An embodiment in the direct sense. In the physical sense.

Russian serviceman Daniil Tulenkov, a former Storm trooper, told of what his company commander with the call sign "Lex" used to do. The episode took place during the occupation of Berdiansk. The episode was supposed to be included in Tulenkov’s new book about "Storm Z," but in the end he decided not to include it.

I quote the original, without cuts or corrections. I highlighted some parts in bold:

"Lex, my first company commander, was a carrier of a specific fascist Nietzschean ideology.

He clearly divided people into bio-trash and the полноценные.

But his gradations were based neither on race nor on religion. He was a social racist.

He liked educated people, despised the ignorant and the stupid.

For all that, he was devout and quoted the Gospel.

In March 2024, already in Moscow, my third company commander, Lis, showed me a video that Lex’s henchmen had recorded in Berdiansk.

They broke into some private home and tortured a family of local residents.

Two of Lex’s henchmen were sitting on a couch with their pants down, while the husband and wife were sucking them off.

Lex himself watched this scene, sitting in an armchair in a Don Corleone pose and smoking a cigarette.

Nearby they held screaming and crying children, forcing them to watch the abuse of their parents.

When Lex was arrested, chekists who had seen all kinds of things shoved the seized phone in his face and asked: ‘Why the fuck were you doing such sick shit, you diseased bastard?’

Lex, who until then had been squirming and writhing like a snake on a frying pan, suddenly pulled himself together, and his voice rasped like metal.

‘I was beating the little Khokhols out of those children. Making them Russian people.’

And I was also told that in the OGPU dungeons Lex cracked right at the very end.

He cried for days on end, shaking in convulsions, howled like a wolf in the winter steppe.

They sat him on a bottle and shocked the shit out of him with electricity, and he broke.

I wanted to include this chapter in ‘Storm Z. You Have No Other Us.’

I even had it entered in the drafts. But I didn’t dare.

I limited myself to general phrases about the outrages our first company commander committed.

But all of this happened. And this too is our ‘Russian world’ that we dragged to a place where nobody was waiting for us.

For fairness’ sake, of course, I will end by saying that it was not ‘people’s avengers’ who stopped Lex’s outrages, but the state security bodies of the Russian Federation.

And it was a Russian court that sentenced him to life imprisonment for organizing a criminal community, rapes, murders, robberies, arms trafficking, and attacks on servicemen.

Lex went down over arms trafficking. That became the trigger point for state security.

Over arms trafficking and an attack on Akhmat fighters.

His henchmen, crazed by blood and impunity, captured a Chechen, dragged him to their lair, beat him, abused him.

By some miracle the guy managed to escape. I saw a video on YouTube with his account of the torture and abuse.

I probably can’t find it now, but never mind.

That’s not the point.

The point is precisely what brought about Lex’s end.

Not these mockeries of the miserable people of Berdiansk. Nobody gave a damn about them.

Lex broke the rules of the System by baring his fangs at what was forbidden.

The chekist, calling him a ‘diseased bastard,’ was not showing emotion, was not giving vent to anything human.

A man with a hot heart, clean hands, and a cold head simply called things by their proper names.

Lex became not just a ‘bastard,’ but a ‘diseased bastard.’

And any system destroys diseased bastards.

Hitler’s Gestapo would have ground Lex into powder, Saddam’s mukhabarat, ISIS counterintelligence.

Any special service would have destroyed a diseased bastard.

But the key word here is not bastard, alas. The key word here is diseased".