When Alexei reads about a sensational contract killing--for example, the opposition Deputy Galina Starovoitova gunned down on the stairs of her apartment building last fall, or the St. Petersburg politician Mikhail Manevich hit five times at long range as his car sped down a busy street in August 1997, or the mafia leader felled by a sniper's single bullet as he left a steam bath--he has an eerie feeling. He wonders whether he trained the hit man. At times, he says, he imagines himself sitting next to the killer, checking his technique as he carries out the hit. Alexei--a pseudonym--is still in his 30s and was until a few years ago a senior officer in the Spetsnaz, the secret Russian special-forces units modeled on the U.S. Delta Force. When it comes to killing, Alexei knows of what he speaks: he was a specialist in the "physical elimination" of adversaries.
Highly classified and highly trained, the Spetsnaz once epitomized the menace and power of the Soviet state. But these days, the Russian military is in such deep decline that the dash last month by 200 of its airborne troops to Pristina airport--traveling over roads not much more dangerous than a Middle-American highway--was hailed as a major feat of arms. Morale is low throughout the Russian army, and the special forces are no exception. But unlike most Russian soldiers, the Spetsnaz have salable skills. They are snipers, explosives and communications specialists, experts in close combat and surveillance, trained to be cool under extreme pressure and to think for themselves. In the Russian marketplace today, that makes them perfect bodyguards and perfect killers. While most Spetsnaz veterans are law-abiding citizens, a small minority have crept into the nation's underworld, with devastating effect.
The decline of the Spetsnaz--and the way the public's perception of these special forces has swung from adulation to cynicism--symbolizes the way Russia has lost its bearings, its hopes for the future and its ideals. An elite group like the Spetsnaz was held together by a belief in the system, as more than half a dozen soldiers interviewed by TIME recall. No longer. "I swore allegiance to Russia," says Alexei. "I don't identify the present regime with Russia." Many feel equally alienated from their corrupt commanders. A conversation with Sergei, a Spetsnaz noncommissioned officer, frequently drifts off into descriptions of how senior officers are stealing the funds for the upkeep of soldiers or even the barracks provided for them. Ivan, a former senior officer who suffered multiple concussions from artillery in Chechnya, explains that he could not obtain a disability pension because he did not have the several thousand dollars for the bribe that a military medical commission demanded to process his application.