All armies do it, but the Russians took it to new depths. In WW2, the front-line Russian troops reportedly were OK, but the drunken rabble that came in afterwards essentially were looters and rapists, on an industrial scale.
This is harrowing testimony from a Russian WW2 veteran, describing the actions of his platoon in the former E Germany – listen to the end, if you can:
Unsurprisingly, it’s also happening in Ukraine:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/25/help-us-find-women-ukrainian-rape-victim-taken-door-to-door/
https://inews.co.uk/news/ukrainian-woman-says-russian-troops-raped-her-1544863
Nobody should be surprised by this. Not only has this always been a deliberate Russian war tactic, the Russian army itself is ran on brutal lines, <hazing to death of new recruits happens, and raping of subordinates occurs>.
Frankly, if your leader and his cohorts describes your neighbours (the ones with the Jewish President) as “Nazis” and “not a real country” and “a cancer”; don’t be too surprised if a bunch of illiterate, brutalised, drunken conscripts take their cues from such utterances.
In the case of Russia, it’s not just the usual wartime thuggery – it’s encouraged from the top. As Stalin infamously remarked, one should “understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle“.
And let’s not forget <Putin’s own chortling approval of rape> in 2006:
“He turned out to be a strong man, raped 10 women,” the Russian president was quoted by Russian media as saying at a meeting in Moscow with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. “I never would have expected it of him. He has surprised us all, we all envy him!”
Disjecta 