Since last year, a photograph of a stand from a Russian military unit has been circulating on social networks. We checked whether such a stand really existed.

According to sources, in July 2022, on the territory of the 205th separate motorized rifle Cossack brigade in Budyonnovsk, a board of shame appeared with portraits and names of servicemen of the unit who refused to participate in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine. The news was accompanied by a photograph of a board with the inscription “They refused to carry out combat missions,” under which more than 300 names were listed.

Many information resources, mostly Ukrainian, wrote about this: Obozrevatel, "During rush hour", "UNIAN", Segodnya.ua, "Chief editor", "Censor.net", "Anticorrosive" And "Rosinform" Relevant blogger tweet Rustem Adagamov dated July 11, 2022, at the time of writing, 466 accounts were shared, and the post of oppositionist Pavel Chuprunov was shared by 275 users Facebook. Among the Telegram channels that spread the news, we can highlight “Nightingale droppings"(226,000 views), "We can explain"(120,000), "Double yat"(84,000), "City of Foolov" (84,000) and "Yoshkin mole"(59,000).

Throughout the entire period of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, reports leaked to the media about the refusal of Russian military personnel to participate in hostilities and even about unauthorized escapes from the conflict zone. According to the findings of BBC journalists, who have studied texts of more than 300 sentences under the article “about unauthorized leaving the place of duty” from February 2022 to January 2023, the most common punishment for this violation is a suspended sentence from six months to five years. Especially often, news about the return to the place of permanent deployment of a military unit came from North Caucasus.

The practice of shame boards with the names of malicious violators of professional regulations or social principles deserves special interest. nascent back in Soviet times and was actively used along with honor boards. In the modern history of Russia, this phenomenon is not so widespread, but it occurs periodically. So, the “Board of Shame” stand can be meet in the places of service of penitentiary workers, and in 2020 it spread throughout the media news about how in one of the military units of the Sverdlovsk region the command decided to punish conscripts who use smartphones. The gadgets were nailed to a board, with the name of its owner indicated under each phone, and signed: “They violated federal law.”

Now directly about the 205th separate motorized rifle Cossack brigade. This connection was based in 1995, took part in two Chechen campaigns, and since 1997 stationed in the city of Budennovsk, Stavropol Territory. According to the volunteer project InformNapalm, fighters of the 205th brigade fought in Donbass back in 2014, and the unit’s participation in the 2022 invasion is confirmed by both data Main Intelligence Directorate Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and information Russian Media. The emblem shown in the upper left corner of the stand in the photo also belongs to her, according to numerous open sources.

On the right side of the photo you can see a gray brick building, white windows, a silver roof, and a thick pipe above the ground. On the territory of the unit, judging by photographs from Internet, there is a similar building.

The image itself does not contain obvious signs of Photoshop. However, there are two elements in the text we see on the poster that are questionable. These are the words “genocide” and “Donbass”, which are surrounded by quotation marks.

How known, in the official rhetoric of the Russian authorities, the events of 2014–2022, in which the civilian population of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions suffered, were called genocide without any quotation marks, while the Ukrainian side does not recognize such formulation. Also, it is from Ukrainian officials that you can sometimes hear the phrase “the so-called Donbass” (for example, in interview head of the Main Intelligence Directorate Kirill Budanov), but on website The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation designates the region without any quotation marks. All this coupled with the fact that in the first hours (in the evening of July 10) the photo was actively distributed Ukrainian channels, may lead one to suspect that it was in this country that it was fabricated. However, it is strange that the authors of the alleged fake, who otherwise took the matter quite seriously and created a fairly plausible poster with text typical of patriotic rhetoric, so absurdly gave themselves away with quotation marks around the words “genocide” and “Donbass.”

In addition, the poster still contains data that could serve as a clue. We are talking about the full names of the refuseniks, many of which can be recognized when the image is enlarged. At least two publications did this in July 2022.

Journalists The Moscow Times One conscientious officer was identified thanks to his page on VKontakte, and the authenticity of the editorial photo was confirmed by a source in the military unit. “After the uproar, the sign was removed, and the authorities came down for it. Most of those whose portraits hang there have already quit,” was the answer from the person who wished to remain anonymous.

Reporters from the website “Present tense" They spoke at once with four former servicemen of the 205th motorized rifle brigade, whose names are mentioned on the sensational stand. Some of them quit right before the start of the Russian invasion, some shortly after the start of hostilities, and some due to failure to provide a deferment. In all cases, the situation does not in any way contradict the words “they refused to fulfill their military duty,” which we see on the board of shame. In a conversation with “Verified” in June 2023, the author of the mentioned article in “NV” confirmed all the information from his article a year ago. At the same time, the servicemen themselves, according to him, did not find the stand, which is logical, given the relatively early time of their dismissal.

Thus, to date, all the people who reacted and were approached by journalists on social networks due to the same name, turned out to be not just employees of the 205th separate motorized rifle brigade, but those who resigned or were fired in connection with the fighting in Ukraine. If someone not associated with the brigade decided to create such a fake board of shame, it would be extremely difficult for him to even just get a list of its soldiers (it is not available in open sources), let alone get to the refuseniks. We also note that at least one, albeit anonymous, source from the unit confirmed the presence of such a stand to journalists from a reputable publication. All this suggests that, in all likelihood, the board of shame in the photo stood for some time in Budyonnovsk.

Cover photo: social networks