Arkady Arkadyevich Babchenko

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Arkady Arkadyevich Babchenko, August 2008 in Tskhinvali

Arkadi Arkadjewitsch Babtschenko ( Russian Аркадий Аркадьевич Бабченко ; born March 18, 1977 in Moscow ) is a Russian journalist ( war reporter ) and author .

Life

Babchenko was drafted into the Russian army as a law student at the age of eighteen and fought in the first Chechen War in 1995 . He returned home in 1997 and completed his intermittent studies. After the beginning of the Second Chechnya War , he rejoined the army and went to war voluntarily. In retrospect, he explained his decision by stating that he suffered from a post-traumatic stress disorder and that there was no therapeutic offer for soldiers. The war was like a drug for him back then. In war, the world is black and white and clear, interpersonal relationships are less complex and every soldier has a specific goal. In 2000 Babchenko returned to his hometown of Moscow and became a journalist for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper .

About a year after his return from the Second Chechen War, Babchenko published a book about his war experiences, which made him famous in literary circles in Russia and then abroad. In the book he described and processed his experiences, the poor to desolate condition of his own troops, the horror of killing and the many atrocities on both sides. For example, he dedicated a chapter of the book to a group of soldiers who are on the verge of starvation and are therefore eating their dog that accompanies the soldiers. In 2001 the book was awarded the Russian Debut Prize for “Courage in Literature”. In 2007 it was published in German translation with the title The Color of War .

During the 2008 Caucasus War , Babchenko was a war correspondent in South Ossetia . There he was with Chechen soldiers of the Russian army who were fighting for a small village. As a war correspondent, he also reported on the unrest in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 .

Like Alexander Karasjow and Sachar Prilepin, Babtschenko is counted among the representatives of the Russian New Realism of the 21st century and continued the tradition of the "lieutenant prose" of the 1960s and 1970s as well as the military prose of the 1990s .

Babtschenko's fourth book Ein Tag wie ein Leben was published in German translation in 2014. It contains descriptions of battles, but a central motif is the soldiers' helplessness, humiliation and fear. In one story, Babchenko describes a runway in the city of Mozdok , which was a center for the transit of Russian forces to Chechnya. Eighteen-year-old soldiers arrive at the base hungry and injured after their basic training and watch as helicopters bring in silver-colored sacks of corpses and then take off again with young soldiers on board. The soldiers hope that their turn will be as late as possible.

In November 2015, Babchenko was awarded the Swedish Tucholsky Prize .

Positions

During his service in the Russian military and his work as a war correspondent, Babchenko developed an anti-war stance . He was increasingly of the opinion that young soldiers are thrown into the "meat grinder" and are inadequately trained and equipped. Babchenko himself had only fired a weapon twice at a firing range before he was sent to war at the age of eighteen. Above all, he criticizes the methods used in combat and the brutal crackdown on the civilian population. In his opinion, Russia should have given Chechnya independence. The two Chechen wars, the war in Georgia and the war in eastern Ukraine have a colonialist character , according to Babchenko .

Babchenko is convinced that Russia missed the opportunity in 2011 to persuade the government to change course in a non-violent way: following irregularities and alleged electoral fraud in the parliamentary elections, there were mass demonstrations after the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections . According to Babchenko, the army and police were only partially loyal to the government at the time. No special attention had been paid to the military and the police and the salaries of soldiers and police officers were comparatively low. After the mass protests in 2011, enormous sums were invested. The armed forces and police forces as well as the National Guard have been strictly loyal to the government since then and would unhesitatingly obey any order to suppress a popular uprising by force. If the demonstrators had refused to leave the streets until their demands were met - as during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004/05 and later during Euromaidan 2013/14 - the government would have had to give way. In 2011 there was still a real opposition. In 2017 the Russian opposition was severely fragmented and scattered from Tel Aviv to New York .

exile

Babchenko left Russia in February 2017 and lived in exile in Prague and later in Kiev . He is a critic of the government and reported critical of the Russian participation in the war in the Donets Basin and the military operation in Syria . In an article in The Guardian , he justified his decision to emigrate from Russia by saying that he no longer felt safe in Russia after he shared a critical post about the Russian bombing of Aleppo on Facebook in 2017 . As a result, he was accused of a lack of patriotism , Duma deputies and Russian state media demanded the revocation of his citizenship, expulsion and expropriation . A petition was launched that garnered 130,000 signatures within 24 hours. His home address was published and a “visit” announced, and Babchenko and his family received daily threats. Even an online game was created in which players were supposed to beat up "enemies of the fatherland" like Babchenko. The tabloid LifeNews reported him to the police for alleged offenses, for example he is said to have been spotted on the bus without a ticket, although he was allowed to use public transport free of charge in Russia as a war veteran. The Russian television broadcaster Tsargrad TV put Babchenko on the list of the "Top 100 Russophobes", even though he had fought for Russia in two wars. According to his own account, Babchenko left the country in the face of violent attacks on government critics by unknown perpetrators. He made plans to leave immediately, but delayed his departure after opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Mursa was poisoned for the second time. The news that criminal proceedings were planned against him finally persuaded Babchenko to travel to Prague immediately.

Faked assassination attempt

Babchenko (right) with the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (center), the head of the secret service Wassyl Hryzak (left) and the Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko (right next to him) on May 30, 2018

On May 29, 2018, numerous media reported the murder of Babchenko with reference to information from the police in Kiev . According to this, Babchenko was found by his wife with gunshot wounds. However, on May 30, the Ukrainian secret service SBU announced that Babchenko was alive and that his murder had been faked by the SBU in order to expose alleged attack plans by the Russian secret service . One month before the incident, Babchenko had been privy to the campaign, which had been ongoing for a long time. Through his cooperation, a person could be arrested and the client was also identified. After their arrest, Babchenko appeared at a press conference, thanked the Ukrainian security service for preventing the attempted murder and apologized for faking his death. The deception was sharply criticized by the Russian Foreign Ministry as well as by representatives of the OSCE and the organization Reporters without Borders.

Works

literature

  • Vlada Menz: Reports of a living dead . In: Die Zeit-Online . February 22, 2007 ( zeit.de ).
  • Jana Simon : The war disabled . In: The time . No. 11 , 2007, p. 61 ( zeit.de ).

Web links

Commons : Arkadiy Babchenko  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g What Will Ultimately Bring Putin Down, According to Exiled Critic Arkady Babchenko . In: Haaretz , August 3, 2017. - Abstract available, May 30, 2018.
  2. ↑ В Киеве застрелили журналиста Аркадия Бабченко. In: Novaya Gazeta . May 29, 2018, accessed on May 30, 2018 (Russian): "The journalist Arkady Babchenko was shot in Kiev"
  3. ↑ Аристов, Денис (Aristow, Denis): О природе реализма в современной русской прозе о войне (2000-е годы) . In: Journal Perm State Pedagogical University , 2011 (2). online (PDF; 231 kB) Retrieved on April 17, 2013 (In the article Russian military fiction of the 2000-s is regarded: its problems, genesis and functioning in the modern literary process, reader and critic reception. Naturalistic, realistic poetics of Arkadi A. Babtschenko, A. Karasjow and S. Prilepin , sharply contrasting with postmodernist poetics of Russian prose of the late XXth century and determining critics to speak about “new realism”, is considered in the context of precedent literary tradition, the tradition of “lieutenants prose” of the 1960-1970-s (novels and stories by J. Bondarew , G. Baklanow, K. Vorobjow, Wassil Bykau ) and military prose of the early 1990-s (works by W. Astafjew , O. Yermakov)).
  4. ↑ Background news “This morning” from Radio SRF , May 30, 2018; "Left Russia because threats against him had piled up", minute 4
  5. ↑ The 'unpatriotic' post on Facebook that meant I finally had to flee Russia . In: The Guardian , February 24, 2017.
  6. ↑ Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko killed in Kiev . In: The Independent , May 29, 2018.
  7. ^ Secret service: Babtschenko allegedly shot dead lives sueddeutsche.de, May 30, 2015; SBU briefing on the Babchenko matter unn.com.ua, May 30, 2018.
  8. ↑ a b Assassinated 'Russian journalist Babchenko turns up alive . In: Financial Times , May 30, 2018.
  9. ↑ Luke Harding: Arkady Babchenko tells media he was taken to morgue for staged 'murder'. May 31, 2018, accessed May 31, 2018 .
  10. ↑ The journalist Arkady Babchenko is alive. His "murder" was staged by the SBU , Novaya Gazeta, May 30, 2018
  11. ↑ Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko appears, alive, after Ukraine staged his death . In: Deutsche Welle , May 30, 2018.
  12. ↑ Arkady Babchenko: Ukraine condemned for faking journalist's murder . In: BBC, May 31, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Babchenko, Arkady Arkadyevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Бабченко, Аркадий Аркадьевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian journalist and author
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow , Soviet Union