Who's On Trial?

Tuesday, Apr. 3, 2001
A wave of terrorist bombings in the Russian northern Caucasus late last month killed 23 people, including a 15-year-old girl, and wounded 144. In Rostov-on-Don, 1,100 km south of Moscow, the trial of Russian Colonel Yuri Budanov on charges of murdering an 18-year-old Chechen girl resumes next week. Both events highlight the madness of Russia's tragic Chechen quagmire.

Budanov, 38, was a rising star in the Russian army when he came back to Chechnya as commander of the 160th tank regiment in September, 1999. He was a hardened veteran of both Chechen wars, having earned two medals for valor and two early promotions that put him on the fast track to a general's stars. But that brilliant military career went off the rails when Budanov became the first high-ranking Russian officer to be charged with what amounts to a war crime: the abduction and premeditated murder of Kheda Kungayeva.

Budanov admits that he killed the girl in a rage, but denies premeditation. His defense insists that he might be found guilty only of exceeding his powers. But whether or not he is convicted on the charges, the case exposes the deep moral trauma that Russia inflicted on itself with this war. Few Russians see Budanov as a criminal. Some view him as much a war casualty as his victim. Most, however, believe he is a hero. Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot openly condone his soldiers murdering civilians, but he cannot risk alienating the army and the public.

The incident occurred on March 26 last year following a party thrown by Budanov to celebrate the birth of a daughter. In the course of the celebration he decided to act on a newly-received intelligence report that a sniper who had shot 15 of his soldiers in previous weeks was Kungayeva, a high school senior who lived with her parents in the village of Tangi-Chu. About 11 p.m., Budanov and three of his soldiers barged into the girls' house and hauled her away. An hour later, she was dead, strangled and raped. Budanov admits strangling the girl, which he says happened while in a state of rage over the deaths of his men. But he denies raping her and denies premeditation. Charges of rape against Budanov were dropped. The soldiers whom Budanov ordered to bury Kungayeva were found guilty of desecrating her body, but pardoned under a blanket amnesty.

Budanov was charged last April and has been held in prison awaiting trial since then. Proceedings were due to begin early last month, but the area around the courthouse was tense. Crowds of Budanov's admirers blocked the building, demanding that he be freed, pardoned or even decorated with yet another medal. When the colonel arrived for the hearing dressed in his combat fatigues with his insignia stripped off, well-wishers gave him red carnations and carried posters bearing slogans like "Purge Chechnya the Beria way," referring to the ruthless 1944 deportation of the Chechen people by Stalin and his secret police chief, Lavrenti Beria. When Rosa Bashayeva, the victim's mother, collapsed from a heart attack under insults and threats from the mob, the trial had to be adjourned until the end of the month.

Meanwhile, Budanov's supporters held rallies to collect signatures for petitions to Putin protesting the "slandering and putting on trial the entire Russian Army on demands from the West." Polls conducted by Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Moscow-based daily, showed that some 79% of Russia's population supported Budanov. Zavtra, a Moscow-based nationalist weekly, carried a front-page poem dedicated to "the Russian hero Yuri Budanov, the example to our boys." Support for Budanov is equally firm among the military. "They sent the army to Chechnya 'to rub them out,'" says Sergei Klyata, 49, a retired air force Lieutenant Colonel and chairman of the Independent Military Trade Union in Rostov. "Budanov's done just that."

Klyata's reference is to a famous Putin call "to rub out terrorists." But Budanov did not kill a terrorist — he killed a girl whose guilt had not been proven. "The Chechens don't have a regular army," Klyata retorts. "What they have is a regular population at war against us. A girl or a two-year-old kid with a bazooka — they are all enemies to be rubbed out." Another Rostov man, a 62-year-old retired manager named Anatoli, expressed regret that the soldiers did not make Kungayeva's death look like a suicide so Budanov would be off the hook. "She was just a Chechen," shrugs Anatoly.

Not surprisingly, Kungayeva's family did not show up for the second trial and asked that the hearings be transferred to a more neutral city. The court denied the request, adjourned the trial once again until next week, but ordered it closed to both public and press "in the interests of security." Klyata believes that, should the court find Budanov guilty, there will be great popular disenchantment with Putin. "He sends the military to kill, and then has them prosecuted under peacetime legislation," he says, echoing a popular sentiment among brother officers. "But all the same, we won't give Chechnya back to the Chechens."

Says General Vitaly Gorobets, chairman of the North Caucasian military district court that is trying the Colonel: "Budanov, like most of those who have been through the Chechen war, needs a psychiatrist." As Russian soldiers continue to kill in Chechnya and Russian civilians die in terrorist bombings, you have to ask: will there be enough shrinks to go around?