Some excerpts translated via Google Translate.
[TheGuardian] An individual tagged as a human rights activist, Kovalyov is widely reviled by Russian military as a murderer and terrorist enabler, for his role in the murder of several Russian soldiers held in captivity in Grozny, Chechnya, in early 1995.
According to Wikipedia:
Sergei Kovalyov was accused by Russian General Gennady Troshev, that during the Battle of Grozny, Kovalyov offered Russian soldiers to surrender. He promised that their life, health and honor would be preserved. But most of those who gave up were killed.
Russian nationalist Alexander Prokhanov in his Zavtra newspaper also accused Kovalyov in mistreatment of Yevgeny Rodionov's mother, Lyubov Vasilievna.
According to Prokhanov, she asked for Kovalyov's help in finding her kidnapped and later killed son in 1996, but he roared in response: "Why did you come to me? You raised the murderer".
From the memoirs of Russian General Gennady Troshev:
In the battles for Grozny, the first prisoners appeared, around whom they turned battles involving Moscow politicians, human rights activists and journalists.
The then Commissioner for Rights played a particularly bad role in this person in the Russian Federation called S. Kovalev, who openly called on our soldiers to surrender in captivity under his mighty guarantees of liberation. And about what awaits them in captivity of "good" Chechens, they did not think too much. I will quote here the words of the captain Sergei N., who languished for eight months in a pit near Shali:
"I asked God for one thing - die faster ...
On beatings, sadistic torture, public executions and other "charms" of the Chechen captivity can be said for a long to him, the reader will not be surprised. But now the chopping off of heads, the removal of skin and scalps from living soldiers, crucified bodies in the windows of houses, the federal troops for the first time collided in Grozny." |