Is evil innate or acquired in circumstances? Is it formed under external influence or does it spring from within? No matter whether it is the former or the latter, eventually, evil appears, and where it came from seems to make no difference. I frequently find myself torn between granting importance to the concept’s nature or emphasizing its aftermath. What created evil, or what evil will create? The essence is often rhetorical, abstract, relative. Trying to stomach that relativism in the nature of an absolute ruinous act can be incredibly bitter. Can evil happen arbitrarily?
These thoughts are flashing in my head as I listen to a captured Russian soldier, one of the six prisoners in a hospital chamber. He offers me practically an opposite point of view of the war. My seemingly stable grasp on humanism, knowledge of the power of propaganda and history and my personal detestation get all mixed up, washed down in confusion and set to zero. “Why?” is all I want to know.
“I was mobilized, so I came. I came to bring peace. You have to fight for peace, fight those who kill our children. The war is a tragedy, a genocide of people, Russian people. In my town there is a newborn left without a father; he was killed here in Ukraine”. I almost growl at him, “A genocide of who?” “Of course,” he says, “of all of us – I know the war sometimes affects the civil population here too. Sometimes the rockets fly too close to the villages. Our guys, why do they join? They need money, there are no jobs and they decide to earn in the army.But I believe it’s better to have a job, a normal peasant job. It’s normal peasant life. It is much better, you do what you are told to do, you have your arms and legs intact, and here – what? You can die any minute.” This treacherous, existential war, for my enemy, this very particular soldier, is nothing but a choice between losing his legs and being a peasant.
He describes how he was captured in Neskuchne. Recounting the bloody fights that he survived. A week ago, I was in the neighboring village, sitting downdown with our storming group between the enemy offensives. The price of advancing was measured in human lives, progress counted in city blocks. Our commander spoke of dignity and the duty of protecting one’s home. He spoke of the fallen soldiers. I break the news to the russian – Neskuchne is now liberated. He joyfully asks “Really? We liberated it?” “No”, I say, “We did.” I manage to read confusion and rivalry in his eyes before he hides them, staring at his missing ankle. “Of course, it’s their right, the Ukrainians, to decide where they want to be. They want to separate; we once allowed them to. Why do we not allow it now? I don’t know.”
My first sight of the Russian prisoners was through the window of one of their bedrooms. Tidy beds, neatly covered with blankets, white pillows, and wide windows with a panoramic view of the dense forest. A football field in the foreground. My first sight of the Russian soldiers was them playing football. Physical activities before lunch, approved by doctors and conventions. I peered into those moving blue robes, gazed at the white pillows, and heard the noise of the game. I remembered the skeletal figures of Ukrainian soldiers returning from Russian captivity. Remembered the blood on the walls of the Russian prison for civilians in Kherson. I remembered a retired man not being able to move his arm after captivity, when Russians seized 42 men from his village in Ukraine. I remembered as well that only 3 of them came back. The football noises were loud and wild.
A prisoner sits, separated from the crowd, gluing carton bags in a group workshop. He mumbles “For the Motherland, yes, for Russia, I was fighting for the Motherland.” He was captured near Zaporizhzhya. I want to see the reasoning. I swallow disgust, I want to know an individual’s motivation to travel thousands of kilometers away from the Motherland to kill for it. “No goal”, he says, “I was doing my duty”. “Did I kill any nazis? I didn’t. But I saw one. He gave me first aid before capturing me. Treated me fine.” He boldly claims his hope for Russia to win. The warden calls him a faggot. There isn’t even an attempt to create an appearance of remorse. The prison does not bother with counter-propaganda, the internalized belief in the righteousness of the Russian Federation is irreversible. An incurable glaucoma.
Walking around the workshop I catch looks. Some are very deliberate, directed, loud. They say that outside these walls they would kill me and do so with a burst of joy. They make sure that I know that. Perhaps it was in those sharp interactions that I first thought of innate evil. Wickedness can be circumstantial, determined by space or time, surroundings, an epoch. It can be acquired. It can stay as a substance, can transform into action, and repeated actions can become character traits. Trying to understand what made these captured Russians evil, and I am without a doubt describing them as evil, I consistently heard the explanation of “I was mobilized, I had no choice,” “I only wanted to help the army, dig the trenches, I am against the war.” And a few sentences later they would let slip that their task was to kill people, and that they were told not to come back until all the Ukrainians on their battlefield were killed. They would admit that they were promised a big salary. Convicts liberated from Russian prisons were promised freedom. They would say things like “I wanted freedom, I don’t know anything about Ukrainians, I don’t care if you are with us or not. I was just tired of being a prisoner.” They would repeat inconsistent propagandistic messages, but wouldn’t know why they were a part of them.
Those wholeheartedly motivated by hate towards Ukrainians are easier to understand. In their perception, the evil of their acts might very plausibly be a virtue: to kill the Nazis, to risk their lives to cut the devil’s throat. I hear the prisoners talk of their battles and find myself content with their losses. An individual is turned into an enemy only when they cross my doorstep with a gun. The wickedness of wishing ill is circumstantial, acquired. But it is only internal, innate evil that is required to sin by inertia, like a sleaze avoiding the choice, the thought, avoiding its own impiety.