Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Screens have become an irrevocable part of most children's lives, but for some they are addictive.(Supplied: Jessica Lewis)
The
first week of school is over in Queensland and another is beginning,
but many parents and carers may already feel a little battle-weary as
children push back against going to class.
Key points:
The use of screens during COVID-19's onset led to more screen addiction, researchers say
Psychologists believe some children use screens excessively as a coping tool
Experts say children can overcome their addiction with proper support and understanding
On
Friday, the New South Wales Opposition vowed to spend $2.5 million on
research into youth screen addictions if elected in March.
One
Queensland researcher said there was growing evidence that the overuse
of digital devices through the first years of the pandemic may be a
major contributor.
Dr Sharman says screen time increased across the world during the pandemic.(Supplied: Rachael Sharman)
She said children's screen time was an "elephant in the room" that should not be ignored.
"What
we absolutely do know was there was an increase in screen time during
the pandemic, and that's not just in Australia, that was across the
world," Dr Sharman said.
"Common sense tells you that's going to happen. Parents needed to work. People were in desperate situations.
"There's
been a lot more screen time and I suppose the potential for some of
those kids to become, unfortunately, addicted to those screens."
The condition even has a new name, intensive early screen exposure.
Screen time a coping tool
Clinical psychologist Kathryn Esparza leads Anxiety House on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
Anxiety House's Kathryn Esparza says children may be using screen time as a way of coping with other issues.(Supplied)
She said if children were particularly attached to their screens, families needed to understand why.
"The
more children use screens as a coping tool or avoidance mechanism, the
less they're having an opportunity to feel their feels, discuss their
feelings with mum and dad and solve their problems," Ms Esparza said.
She said it was understandable that some children did not want to surrender or log off their devices.
"This
is about how we actually have to teach children, through parents being
educated on better coping tools, better coping mechanisms," Ms Esparza
said.
"Then we can start to reduce the reliance on screen time — if it has become a form of coping."
Ramsay
Mental Health, a private mental health provider, found that 45 per
cent of Australian teenagers aged 17 and under said they used their
smartphone almost constantly.
Matthew Shaw, from
the company's young persons' program, wrote that while the technology
itself was not harmful, excessive use could cause "anxiety, anger,
isolation and, in extreme examples, refusing to attend school".
Don't blame the parents, GP says
James Best chairs the Royal Australia College of General Practice's child and young person health group, and is a GP himself.
Dr Best urges understanding, particularly if social media represents a child's friendship group.(Supplied: Dr James Best)
He
believed extra screen time throughout the pandemic, and since, was
likely contributing to an increase in school refusals and screen
addiction.
But Mr Best said parents did not deserve the blame.
"It's viewed externally as parents just using screens as an electronic babysitter but I see it more the other way," he said.
"It's usually a battle, that parents are trying to get kids away from screens, particularly when it's becoming a problem."
Dr Best urged understanding, especially where social media represented a child's entire friendship group.
"To take away that screen can be very traumatic for the individual child or young person," he said.
TV can be worse than video games
Lisa
Mundy from the Australian Institute of Family Studies heads the
Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, a program that follows 10,000
children from families across the country.
Children can overcome screen dependency with support and understanding.(Unsplash: Igor Starkov)
She said gaming was not necessarily the biggest problem.
"We
found that for children who have two or more hours of TV a day, two
years later they were roughly a third of a year behind their peers in
their learning," Dr Mundy said.
"For children who were using an hour or more of computer use, they also had a decline in their academic performance.
"But interestingly, for those kids who were online using video games, there wasn't the link with academic performance."
Dr Lisa Mundy leads a study of more 10,000 children across Australia.(Supplied: Australian Institute of Family Studies)
She
said for kids who were addicted to their screens and refusing to go to
school, the promise of a screen as a "reward" was not part of their
thinking.
What families can do to help their kids
Dr
Sharman said for parents and carers with children reluctant to leave
their devices, an "extinction process", or putting the tablet on top of a
cupboard, had worked for her young daughter.
"We dealt with tantrums, and we dealt with the crying, screaming and carrying on," she said.
But she conceded it would not be so easy for those with older kids.
"If
you've got someone who's 16 and they've been addicted to screens for 10
years, you've got a very big uphill battle on your hands," Dr Sharman
said.
"What I would be saying to parents is, 'Prevention is so much better than cure'."
Dr
Mundy said research suggested too much or too little technology was a
problem for children, depending on their age, but finding that middle
ground was not an exact science.
"It's really about finding that healthy balance," she said.
While C/2022 E3 (ZTF) may result in some stunning astrophotograhy, its green glow will not be visable to the naked eye.(NASA: Dan Bartlett)
A
1-kilometre-wide comet will make its closest pass to Earth on Monday
night, January 30, giving Australians a small chance of catching a
glimpse of what's being referred to as the "green comet".
Here's what you need to know.
What is the 'green comet'?
The
green comet, or Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), was discovered by astronomers
using the wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility in
California in early March 2022.
The comet was closest to the Sun on January 12 and it will be the closest to Earth – 41.8 million km — on February 2.
Back
in December, NASA said that, while the brightness of comets is
notoriously unpredictable, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) could become only just
visible to the eye in dark night skies at its closest point to earth.
According to The Planetary Society, the comet has a solar orbit of roughly 50,000 years, which means it hasn't been seen in the night sky since Neanderthal times.
How can I see the 'green comet' in Australia?
You'll have your best chance at night between February 1 and 2.
However, while NASA has said the comet might be slightly visible to the naked eye, amateur star searchers should not expect a bright-green light show.
"It
won't be green to the naked eye, maybe with a substantial telescope,
but it will mostly be through astrophotography," UQ astrophysicist
Dr Ben Pope told ABC News.
"Nearly everything in
astronomy is basically white to the naked eye except, like, red giant
stars and Mars appears a little red, Jupiter is quite noticeably
yellow."
Thanks to light pollution, even seeing the
comet with the naked eye could be a problem, unless you're in a very
dark part of the country.
"Basically, they're very
faint, you get a lot of people who go outside and wait and wait, and
say, 'I didn't see anything', but that's because you're in the inner
suburbs, even outer suburbs it'll be hard," Dr Pope said.
"It's very hard to see unless you're in a very dark space."
Where C/2022
E3 (ZTF) will shine, is through astrophotography. Some US experts have
already been able to capture its brilliant, green glow as it passed by
the Northern Hemisphere earlier this month.
So keep your eyes peeled for some beautiful pictures in the days after the comet's passing.
Why is the comet green?
Comets
are made of a mixture of rocky materials, similar to what's in the
Earth's mantle: dust and ices, not just water-ice but also components
such as dry ice, methane, ammonia and carbon monoxide.
To
prove their theory, researchers isolated the C2 molecule and blasted it
with high-intensity light. What they found was that two light photons
push the C2 molecule into an energy-rich, unstable configuration.
From there, the molecule decays and radiates a green light photon — just like what we see with some comets.
There’s a quick way to tell if an electronic
gaming machine policy is good or bad: If ClubsNSW is backing it, it will
be bad – simply aimed at maximising the industry winning and people
losing.
Thus the 500-machine cashless card “trial” pushed by the gaming lobby
and adopted by its Labor clients is crook – a means of delaying
reform, open to fiddling and intrinsically half-arsed.
And here’s a quick demonstration of what happens to independent
politicians who stand up to ClubsNSW: The machine will come after you.
There are three NSW independent MPs who bailed from the Shooters and
Fishers Party. One of them, Helen Dalton, the member for Murray, is
unapologetically backing the NSW Crime Commission’s recommendation of
cashless gaming.
NSW Greens Cate Faehrmann and independent Helen Dalton at the launchof the Put Pokies in Their Place campaign in November. Photo: AAP
“The introduction of mandatory cashless gaming cards to all NSW clubs
is ‘significant government overreach’ that will ‘devastate’ the
industry, according to Murray Downs Golf and Country Club chief
executive Greg Roberts,” reported the paper.
“Representative body ClubsNSW has launched a campaign, Gaming Reform
the Right Way, to counter the NSW government’s proposed cashless gaming
card and, in particular, independent MP Helen Dalton, who has joined a
coalition of independent MPs calling for gambling reform.”
Talking points
And on it runs, 42 paragraphs of mainly ClubsNSW talking points,
quoting the golf and gaming club CEO and the ClubsNSW chief, former
Labor political staffer, Josh Landis.
Helen Dalton was afforded six and four paragraphs in the articles. Photo: AAP
Tucked away well down in the body of the story, Ms Dalton is accorded
six paragraphs which are then afforded lengthy rebuttal by the pokies
men.
Those six pars were better than Ms Dalton received three days later when The Guardian
and the lobby were back at it with “Cashless gaming plan will
‘devastate’ clubs”, this time quoting the Euston Bowling and Recreation
Club CEO Guy Fielding, running the lines in a 35-paragraph spray. Ms
Dalton’s case was limply accorded just the final four of those 35.
“More clubs along the Murray border say they have been dealt a joker
by a push to impose mandatory cashless gaming cards on all NSW clubs to
curb problem gambling,” begins the Guardian (no relation to The Guardian) story.
The article is paywalled but I’ve done the reading for you. In my
opinion, the spin attempted by the two clubs ranges from the risible to
laughable.
There’s the NRA-style, cooker-ish “beware of government” stuff:
“This will allow the government to track patrons’ gambling
activity and impose limits on how they spend their own money. Regular
people don’t want the government to track their gambling. Assistance
already exists for someone who may have a problem.”
Mr Roberts added many of the members still used cash and were
“scared” about submitting their sensitive information to the government
in light of recent data hacks.
Cue Euston’s Mr Fielding:
“They are taking away people’s ability to spend their money,” he said.
“Take gambling out of it, what other things are the government going to introduce? … What are they wanting to control next?”
Follow the money
The
Murray Downs Golf and Country Club contributed more than $90,000 to the
community from gaming revenue of $5 million in 2021. Photo: murraydownsgolf.com.au
There’s the usual Big Gaming line about clubs being genuinely
concerned about problem gambling and suggesting there are already
adequate systems in place to help people.
Yeah, right. That’s always worth a wry smile, but the really funny
stuff is the impression given that these poor struggling community
organisations would be “devastated” by any reduction in their gaming
machine take.
The Murray Downs Golf and Country Club latest annual report is for
the year ended December 31, 2021 – a year hurt by COVID-19 border
closures so that gaming revenue (i.e. what players’ lost) was “only” $5
million, down 23 per cent on the normal 2019 year’s $6.5 million.
Despite COVID and helped by government grants, the club still
recorded a million-dollar profit and finished the year sitting on $3.8
million in cash and retained profits of $17.7 million.
And out of those riches, “the club contributes more than $90,000 in annual community contributions,” CEO Roberts told the Swan Hill Guardian.
I presume that number is out of a much richer 2022 performance with
the border open, but let’s just compare it with the cash pile at the end
of 2021 – to use a technical term, bugger-all.
The Euston Club made $10.3 million in the 2021-22 financial year. Photo: eustonclub.com.au
The latest Euston Bowling and Recreation Club annual report is for
the 2021-22 financial year and thus includes some better trading months
than the 2021 calendar year.
The annual report is at least honest about what the place is: “The
principal activities of the economic entity during the financial year
were hospitality, gaming.”
I’d put “gaming” first though – it totally dominates the club. Of
total receipts of $13.3 million in the last financial year, $10.3
million came from gaming – that is, what gamblers lost on Euston’s 128
machines – delivering a gaming net profit of $7.1 million.
The average NSW machine return rate would mean more than $100 million was put through Euston’s machines.
Euston finished last year sitting on $6 million in cash and net assets of $31.7 million.
The club’s bottom line for the year was a net profit of $4.15 million.
Community donations
Sure, a reduction of a few per cent in pokies profits would “devastate” the industry.
As reliable as what bears do in the woods, Euston’s CEO trotted out the community donations line.
He said venues, such as the Euston club, provided regular funding
to schools, sporting clubs and hospitals and a loss in revenue would
mean less funds for the community.
“We donated $450,000 through the club grants last year alone,” Mr Fielding said.
That must be the 2022 calendar year. The 2021-22 annual report showed
donations of $208,447 – the minimum 2 per cent of profits the club has
to pay to get its tax break.
I’m guessing Euston might have paid its 2021-22 donations in the
second half of that financial year and paid its 2022-23 donations in the
first half to achieve the $450,000 “last year alone”.
Oh, did I mention Euston carries its poker machine entitlements as a
$2.5 million asset? That’s just what the licences to have the machines –
licences that can be traded between clubs – are worth.
There’s also the usual line about what it might cost to convert
machines to cashless gaming, but that’s a fraction of the profits the
machines make each year.
The Guardian quotes ClubsNSW CEO Landis promising more such spinning:
ClubsNSW chief executive Josh Landis said clubs in the region
were joining Moama Bowling Club as third-party political campaigners
because Ms Dalton’s approach meant they had no other options.
“As we come out of COVID lockdowns and floods, clubs around NSW
are looking to their MPs for support, not uninformed attacks on their
right to exist,” Mr Landis said.
“As I talk with clubs, what is abundantly clear to me is they are
unhappy about how they have been treated as a political plaything,
while the good they do for their communities has been ignored.
“The Murray River clubs are the first to launch a campaign, but those clubs are not alone in being angry.”
Independents Phil Donato and Roy Butler are backing ClubsNSW. Photo: AAP
Those other two regional
former-Fishers-and-Shooters-turned-independents, the member for Orange,
Phil Donato, and Barwon, Roy Butler? Oh, they’re backing ClubsNSW.
Ms Dalton has demonstrated what they might expect if they don’t.
Poland will send at least 30 of its PT-91 tanks to Ukraine, on top of an already promised 12 Leopard 2 tanks.(Reuters: Ints Kalnins)
Poland
will send an additional 60 tanks to Ukraine on top of the 14
German-made Leopard 2 tanks it has already pledged, the Polish prime
minister has said in an interview.
Key points:
Poland has sent hundreds of tanks to its neighbour Ukraine since Russia invaded in February last year
The PT-91 is a Polish-made battle tank that came into service in the 1990s
Russia has blocked the CIA and FBI websites for 'spreading false information'
Warsaw,
which has positioned itself as one of Kyiv's staunchest allies, had
pressed hard for Germany to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and to allow
other countries to do so as well, a demand which Berlin agreed to on Wednesday.
"Poland sent 250 tanks as the first country half a year ago or even more than that," Mateusz Morawiecki told Canada's CTV News.
"Right now, we are ready to send 60 of our modernised tanks, 30 of them PT-91.
"And on top of those tanks, 14 tanks, Leopard 2 tanks, from in our possession."
The PT-91 is a Polish-made battle tank that came into service in the 1990s.
It was developed from the Soviet-era T-72 range, of which Ukraine has hundreds.
The remainder of the tanks that will be sent are upgraded T-72s.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Poland on Twitter for the decision to supply the additional tanks.
"Like
160 years ago we are together, but this time the enemy doesn't stand a
chance," Mr Zelenskyy wrote. "Together we will win!"
On Thursday, Canada announced that it would send four Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine.
Norway has also said it will send Leopards, while Spain says it is open to providing them.
Ukraine has said it needs hundreds of the Leopards to drive Russia from its territory.
On
Friday, Poland's Deputy Defence Minister Marcin Ociepa told private
broadcaster RMF FM that it would be around three months before Leopard
tanks reached Ukraine.
"It depends what country we
are talking about, but I would estimate that we are talking about around
a quarter … until those tanks can really be on Ukrainian territory and
go into battle," he said.
Germany accuses Russia of twisting minister's comments for 'propaganda'
Germany says Russia twisted comments made by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.(Reuters: Piroschka van de Wouw)
Germany's
foreign ministry says Russia twisted comments by Germany's foreign
minister about the war in Ukraine for propaganda purposes, while
stressing Berlin's position that NATO must not become party to the
conflict.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock riled
Moscow with comments at an event in Strasbourg on Tuesday, when,
speaking in English, she said that "we are fighting a war against
Russia, and not against each other".
She
spoke the day before the German government announced it was arming
Ukraine with advanced Leopard tanks, putting aside earlier reservations
about whether such a move could prompt Moscow to escalate the war.
Russian
foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in a post on her Telegram
messaging channel cited by the state TASS news agency, seized on Ms
Baerbock's comments as evidence the West was waging a "premeditated war
against Russia".
While Ms Baerbock has often
sounded more hawkish than other members of the German cabinet about
supporting Ukraine, Berlin has repeatedly stressed that it wants to
avoid the NATO alliance becoming a party to the conflict.
This concern was part of the reason for Germany's delay in agreeing to send the Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
"Russian
propaganda continually takes statements, sentences, stances, positions
of the government, our partners and uses them to serve their purposes," a
German foreign ministry spokesperson said.
Russia blocks CIA, FBI websites for 'spreading false information'
Meanwhile,
Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor says it has blocked the
websites of the CIA and FBI, accusing the two US government agencies of
spreading false information, the TASS news agency reported.
"Roskomnadzor
has restricted access to a number of resources belonging to state
structures of hostile countries for disseminating material aimed at
destabilising the social and political situation in Russia,"
Roskomnadzor said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
TASS
quoted the regulator as saying that the two American websites had
published inaccurate material and information that had discredited the
Russian armed forces.
There was no immediate comment from Washington or from the US embassy in Moscow.
Russia
has made it a criminal offence to discredit its armed forces, a crime
punishable by up to five years in jail, while knowingly distributing
"false information" about the military carries a maximum sentence of 15
years.
Since Russia sent tens of thousands of
troops into Ukraine in February last year, Roskomnadzor has blocked a
host of independent media outlets, some foreign news websites and social
media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Late
last summer, a plot of land on the edge of a small farming community in
southern Russia began to fill with scores of newly dug graves of
fighters killed in Ukraine.
Key points:
Western and Ukrainian officials accuse private army Wagner Group of using prisoners as cannon fodder
Russia's prison population decreased by more than 28,000 between August and November 2022
Some relatives of convicts killed say they were unaware their loved ones had been recruited
The
resting places were adorned with simple wooden crosses and brightly
coloured wreaths that bore the insignia of Russia's Wagner Group, a
feared and secretive private army.
There were
around 200 graves at the site on the outskirts of Bakinskaya village in
Krasnodar region when Reuters visited in late January.
The
news agency matched the names of at least 39 of the dead there and at
three other nearby cemeteries to Russian court records, publicly
available databases and social media accounts.
Reuters also spoke to family, friends and lawyers of some of the dead.
In a short, open reply to the US government, Mr Prigozhin asked Mr Kirby to "please clarify what crime was committed" by Wagner.
Cemetery surrounded by fences, security cameras
Videos and photographs of the graves first appeared on social media channels in the Krasnodar region in December.
Reuters
geolocated these images to the Bakinskaya cemetery and reviewed
satellite imagery of the site from Maxar Technologies and Capella Space.
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted to founding the Wagner Group. (AP Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Satellite
pictures show that the Wagner plot was empty in the summer, had three
rows of graves by the end of November and was three-quarters full by
early January.
Virtually the entire plot was used by January 24.
Local
activist Vitaly Votanovsky — who took the first pictures and has
documented soldiers killed in Ukraine and buried in Krasnodar region
graveyards — told Reuters he observed a truck delivering bodies to the
cemetery.
He said gravediggers told him the bodies
had come from the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, close to Russia's
border with Donetsk region.
When Reuters visited
the cemetery in January, fences and security cameras were being
installed around the plot and another burial was underway.
Russian
state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published footage in early January
of Mr Prigozhin visiting the cemetery, crossing himself and laying
flowers on one grave.
He told local media the men
buried there had expressed a wish to be laid to rest at a Wagner chapel
outside the nearby town of Goryachiy Klyuch, rather than having their
bodies returned to relatives.
The Bakinskaya plot was provided by the local authorities, he said, after the chapel ran out of space.
Russian convicts identified in Bakinskaya cemetery
In
2019, Reuters reported on the existence of a Wagner training camp in
the village of Molkino, around 9 kilometres from Bakinskaya.
Of
the 39 convicts Reuters identified, 10 had been imprisoned for murder
or manslaughter, 24 for robbery and two for grievous bodily harm.
The graves rapidly increased over the space of a few weeks. (Reuters: Stringer)
Other crimes included manufacturing or dealing in drugs and blackmail.
Among the convicts were citizens of Ukraine, Moldova and the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia.
Wooden
markers on their graves at Bakinskaya and three nearby cemeteries show
the men perished between July and December 2022, at the height of the battle for Bakhmut.
One of the youngest, buried at the nearby Martanskaya cemetery, is Vadim Pushnya.
He was just 25 years old when he died on November 19.
Pushnya
was imprisoned in 2020 for burgling garages, a beer shop and a cement
factory in his hometown of Goryachiy Klyuch, close to the Wagner chapel.
The birthdate on Pushnya's grave matches the date given on his social media accounts and in court records.
On
the other hand, the oldest buried prisoner, Fail Nabiev, was serving
one-and-a-half years for burglary in Ivanovo region's Penal Colony No.
2, 321km north-east of Moscow, at least his second such prison spell.
He
had been convicted in May 2022 — by a court in the picturesque tourist
town of Suzdal — of stealing a string trimmer and a sanding machine
valued at a total of 5,500 roubles ($110) from a garage.
According
to his simple wooden grave marker, emblazoned with an Islamic crescent
moon, Nabiev died in October, less than five months after being
sentenced. He was 60.
Nabiev's common-law wife,
Olga Viktorova, confirmed to Reuters that her husband had been killed
while serving with Wagner in the military campaign in Ukraine.
Ms
Viktorova said her husband had been nearing the end of his prison term,
and had substantial credit card debts that she was now left to pay.
She said she did not know that her husband had joined Wagner until after his death.
Russian independent news site iStories has reported that Mr Prigozhin visited Penal Colony No. 2 to recruit fighters in August.
Officials say the nearby chapel ran out of space for the bodies. (Reuters: Stringer )
Reuters could not independently verify the report.
"He always had crazy ideas. An incorrigible optimist," Ms Viktorova said.
She said Nabiev probably "thought that he'd take a quick trip to Ukraine and earn some money".
Wagner claims convict fighters given 'second chance' on front
The Kremlin, Russia's Defence Ministry and Russian prison authorities did not reply to questions for this article.
However, the Russian government has in the past praised the "courageous and selfless actions" of Wagner fighters.
Wagner's founder Mr Prigozhin, who also didn't comment, has said previously he was giving convicts "a second chance at life."
Although
Reuters was unable to confirm where exactly the men died, the mother of
one said that her son was killed in the Donetsk region.
The social media accounts of several others also indicate that they were in Ukraine prior to their deaths.
Since
the beginning of Russia's war in Ukraine, the previously secretive
Wagner founder Mr Prigozhin has since assumed an increasingly public
profile.
In the past, Wagner fighters have deployed to Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic in support of Russia's allies.
Mr
Prigozhin — known in Russia as "Putin's chef" because of his Kremlin
catering contracts — had consistently denied any links to Wagner.
Since
then, Mr Prigozhin has repeatedly visited the frontlines in eastern
Ukraine, while also criticising Russia's military leadership and some
senior officials, and personally spearheading a drive to recruit
fighters from Russia's sprawling penal system.
According
to a regular report published by the Russian Federal Penitentiary
Service, Russia's penal colony population decreased by about 8 per cent
from 353,210 in August to 324,906 in early November, the largest drop in
more than a decade.
The report gave no reasons for
the sudden, sharp decline, which coincided with the beginning of
Wagner's prison recruitment push.
The Federal Penitentiary Service did not reply to detailed questions for this article.
Last
month, Reuters reported that the US intelligence community believed
Wagner had approximately 40,000 prisoner recruits deployed in Ukraine,
as of December, accounting for the vast majority of Wagner personnel in
the country.
Wagner has not commented on the figure nor provided any information on fighter numbers.
In
a January 14 video message, Mr Prigozhin described Wagner as a fully
independent force with its own aircraft, tanks, rockets and artillery.
It was "probably the most experienced army that exists in the world today", he said.
Russia's criminal underclass drawn into fighting in search of pardons
Some
of the convicts identified by Reuters were violent offenders who had
spent much of their adult life in prison or were facing long sentences.
Court
papers reviewed by Reuters also portray men who had struggled with
alcohol problems. The names of some others are on banking blacklists,
suggesting personal financial troubles.
Wagner opened its own military centre in St Petersburg late last year. (Reuters: Igor Russak)
Their lives bring into bleak focus the realities of Russia's criminal underclass.
Mr Prigozhin, in December, told Russian news site RBC he was giving convicts an opportunity "to redeem themselves".
In January, he appeared alongside the first group of fighters to be pardoned, having survived their stints in Ukraine.
A
few weeks later, he wrote an open letter to the speaker of Russia's
parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, asking him to criminalise any actions or
publications that discredit Wagner fighters and to outlaw public
disclosure of their criminal pasts.
He wrote that
those "who are risking their lives every day and dying for the
Motherland are being portrayed as second-class people, stripping them of
the right to atone for their guilt".
Yevgeny Prigozhin is wanted by the FBI for conspiracy to defraud the United States.(Reuters: FBI)
Mr Volodin did not reply to Reuters' request for comment.
Among the prisoners identified by Reuters was 43-year-old Anatoly Bodenkov.
He was serving a 16-year sentence after his conviction as a contract killer, court papers show.
According
to a local news report on the case, in 2016 Bodenkov murdered a local
real estate agent in the northern city of Kirovo-Chepetsk with a
sawn-off shotgun, for 400,000 roubles ($8,072.20).
His grave marker said Bodenkov died on November 27, 2022. It doesn't say where.
A
second prisoner, Viktor Deshko, 40, was sentenced to 10 years for a
murder in 2021, according to court documents and local media reports.
He
cut a woman's throat during a drunken argument over money in the
forests near the mining town of Shakhty, close to the border with the
Russian-controlled Donbas.
Court documents described Deshko as "an aggressive person, given to abusing alcohol".
He
was on probation at the time of the killing, having previously served
three and a half years for assault with a deadly weapon.
For Bodenkov and Deshko, the full names and dates of birth on the grave markers matched their social media and court records.
Reuters was not able to contact friends or family of the two men, and their lawyers did not reply to requests for comment.
A
third man, Vyacheslav Kochas, was sentenced to 18 years in prison by a
St Petersburg court, for murder and armed robbery in 2020, when he was
23.
According to Russian court documents, Kochas
and another man burst into the apartment of an acquaintance while drunk,
in an attempted robbery.
He was found to have beaten the acquaintance and a female victim unconscious, using an iron and a metal clothes horse.
Kochas
then set fire to an item of clothing and threw it at the unconscious
man. Much of the apartment was gutted by the fire, and the man succumbed
to his wounds two days later.
Russia has vowed to increase its military spending over the coming year. (Reuters: Yulia Morozova)
Photographs of Kochas on social media show a baby-faced man. In some, he is embracing an unidentified young woman.
Kochas's profile on VKontakte, Russia's Facebook equivalent, now reads: "Killed in the Donbas".
His
grave marker at Bakinskaya gives his date of death as July 21, shortly
after his 25th birthday and in the earliest days of Russia's push
towards Bakhmut.
Kochas's lawyer, Stepan Akimov,
described his former client as "a really ordinary guy" whom, he said,
had been unfairly convicted.
The last he heard from Kochas was a text message after his appeal failed, thanking Mr Akimov for his help.
Mr Akimov learned from Reuters that his former client had joined Wagner.
"I can imagine, given the length of his sentence, and how young he was, it seemed to him a way to go free," Mr Akimov said.
"When
a prisoner has a double-digit sentence, here they're offering release
in six months. Apparently, Vyacheslav thought this offer was a way out."
Reuters was unable to reach Kochas' surviving relatives.
'Think of themselves as becoming winners'
Russia has one of the world's largest prison populations per capita.
Mark
Galeotti — author of The Vory: Russia's super mafia, a book on Russia's
criminal and prison cultures — said the potential appeal of Wagner to
inmates was wider than just a bid for clemency.
Service
with Wagner, he said, offered pride and a sense of purpose to convicts
with few prospects after release, people who have spent time in a prison
culture suffused with "a very strong Russian nationalist tinge".
"Yes,
this will give you the chance to get out of prison, but also it gives
you the chance to actually be someone," Mr Galeotti said.
"This
is a way in which, actually, Wagner can appeal to people who definitely
are, or believe themselves to be, marginalised, outsiders, losers in
some way in the system, and gives them the chance to think of themselves
as becoming winners."
The private military group has grown in infamy since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Reuters: Marko Djurica)
At least one of the men buried at Bakinskaya concealed their criminal record and prison time from loved ones.
For
more than half a decade after she married and left her hometown of
Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, Svitlana Holyk believed that her brother,
Yury Danilyuk, was working somewhere in the far north of Russia.
The
two Ukrainian-born siblings had few living relatives and rarely spoke
after Russian-backed proxies seized their home city in 2014, she said.
She knew only that her brother travelled regularly for work to the Russian border city of Bryansk, 800km away.
However,
while she was building a new life in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, Yury
was using social media to subscribe to pro-Russian groups supporting
the Donbas separatist insurgency, his online activity shows.
In
2016, having been out of touch for a year and a half, he told his
sister he had moved to Russia's Arctic north. She said his messages were
short, and he said little about his life.
"I
suspected then that something had happened, that he might have some
troubles, that he did not want to, or could not, talk about for some
reason," she told Reuters, speaking Ukrainian, in a telephone call from
Dnipro.
A close friend of Yury Danilyuk spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The friend said that Yury had lied to his sister, whom he deeply loved, to avoid upsetting her with news of his imprisonment.
In reality, he had been sentenced in 2016 to nine years and eight months in prison on drugs charges.
The two men were incarcerated together in Krasnodar region's Penal Colony No. 6.
YouTube A defector who fought for the Wagner group says he witnessed prisoners of war being executed.
The friend said he last spoke to Yury in September 2022 and heard later that month from other inmates that he had joined Wagner.
Olga
Romanova — a prisoners-rights activist with the Russia Behind Bars
watchdog group — told Reuters that Mr Prigozhin had visited Penal Colony
No. 6 to recruit inmates on two separate occasions.
Reuters could not independently verify these visits.
The
friend said that, during his time in jail, Yury fell in with a faction
of prisoners who refused to cooperate with prison authorities on
principle, a common phenomenon in Russia's penitentiary system.
That meant he forfeited the chance of early release for good behaviour.
The
friend said that Yury's decision to join Wagner was motivated by the
knowledge that he would likely otherwise serve his long sentence in
full.
According to his grave, Yury Danilyuk died on November 30, 2022. He was 28.
His
sister said she had known nothing of her brother's prison sentence,
service with Wagner, and eventual death during Russia's war against the
country of their birth until contacted by Reuters journalists.
"The
fact that Yury died I learned from you," she said. "I re-read your
message several times when you wrote to me. Somehow I couldn't believe
it."
The inmate friend recalled Yury as a fierce patriot of his native Donbas, with a passion for cars.
"I blame it all on him not wanting to cooperate with the prison authorities," the friend said.
"If he had agreed, he'd be alive. But he refused, so he's a fool."
