How Putin's War Is Unleashing a Crisis Back Home in Russia
Months after returning home to Russia from the frontline in Ukraine, he can’t escape the explosions, the violence and the terror. They echo through his head. Private Alexander Teploukhov has seen more carnage and brutality than any man should endure, some he witnessed firsthand, some he caused himself.
In episodes he calls “memory holes,” the 52-year-old is transported back to the Avdiivka combat zone in war-torn Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine. Every emotion rushes through him again as the scene unspools before him: his unit has to run; his partner is shot; they are digging; flames erupt; they run again. He can’t escape.
It’s “torture,” Teploukhov tells The Daily Beast.
Each episode lasts for two or three minutes, twice they struck him when he was on public transport. When he recovered, he found people staring at him. “When the nightmare ended, I had no clue where I really was or what I had done during the flashbacks,” he said.
Whatever you think of the soldiers in President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine—some conscripted against their will, some brainwashed into believing it was their patriotic duty—the war does not end when they return home.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-putins-war-is-unleashing-a-crisis-back-home-in-russia
Wow. A whole generation of ex-cons with PTSD. What could possibly go wrong? I ask you.