10) Kill or Be Killed
2024-06-04 00:42:17
<p>Imagine you were a fly on the wall at a dinner between the mafia, the CIA, and the KGB. That’s where this unprecedented story begins. A journey through the dark world of Russian intelligence where, for the first time, a professed “sex spy” tells her story. All of it. </p> <p>Host Neil Strauss (Rolling Stone, The New York Times) brings listeners into the dangerous world of sexpionage, where enemies of the State are not the only victims. So too are the spies themselves, brainwashed to believe that their bodies belong to Russia and meticulously trained to become “the perfect weapons.” Who is Aliia Roza? From the creators of the hit podcast series To Live and Die in LA, this is To Die For.</p>
Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games. And then, a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my life and so many others, forever, rippling out for generations.
Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All eight episodes of To Die For are available now to binge absolutely free.
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Warning. The following episode contains explicit language and sexual themes.
Listener discretion is advised.
So you went to your place, you packed up, did you talk to your parents at all? No. So you didn't even tell your dad you were going to Chechnya?
No.
Really?
I just, I don't know, I just didn't speak with them.
We didn't talk for, like, quite a long time, for the whole year.
Did you tell anyone else or anyone in your family?
No.
Not even your sister?
I couldn't speak with my sister. I mean, I was not allowed to speak with my sister.
You might have, like, died in Chechnya and your family just would have found out.
I mean, they would find out at some point.
I mean, they would find out through, like, a letter or someone shrunk up their door, but you never even would have told them you were going to the war.
Well, they said that I wish you to be not alive.
I was thinking, I mean, it doesn't matter if I will go, even if I will be dead. They don't really care anyway.
I felt like maybe this is it. This is the end, which will give me the relief.
I got you, I tear you apart. I had to kill you, cause it's so much fun.
So,
in the morning, I arrived at the train station, and we all lined up. I had my backpack with me, and I...
It was one of the worst days of Aliyah's life, and possibly one of the last. As punishment for rejecting her new commander's advances, she had been sent away to die on the front lines of a war 500 miles away.
So, first we sat down into the train, and everybody in the car were just young boys. Their eyes were full of fears. I looked at them, and everybody just had only one thought. Will I survive? Will I come back?
The train was bound for the border between Russia and Chechnya, a mostly Muslim region just north of the country of Georgia. It was annexed by Russia in the 19th century, and ever since then has been trying, with varying degrees of success, to be unannexed. And independent again.
When we arrived at the main station, we were given this uniform. It was like a thick jacket. The color was dark green. Everything was much bigger than my size.
And they gave us guns, but like, sniper guns, VCC, and SVD. I didn't have any idea even how to, like, use these guns.
Some nine years earlier, Chechnya had declared its independence. And now, Aliya and her fellow soldiers were there fighting in a war for Putin, who was determined to retake control of the territory. for Russia. This was the second Chechen war.
And then I had this guy, and he was standing next to me, and he was, like, from Kyrgyzstan, I think. He probably saw, like, that. I was all depressed because I was standing there as a zombie. He was telling me some funny stories, and very stupid. And I looked at him and was like, can you, like, stop?
And he said, is it, like, your first time? I'm like, yes, of course it's my first time. He's like, relax, it's, like, my second time. So no worries, nothing happened. See, I'm still alive, I'm still here.
The newly arrived soldiers, including Aliya and the man she was talking to, Rashid, were then ordered onto trucks and sent to the front lines.
He was talking, and then he started to smoke, and everybody was smoking, and I just,
I thought, like, maybe it will help me out. So I tried to smoke, and then I was coughing. And I said, fuck it, I'm not doing this, like, I couldn't. And then he said, good, good, it's better not to smoke if you're a sniper. And I was like, why?
And then another guy was sitting next to me, he said, if you smoke in the night, your enemy may see you, and if they can just track or, like, calculate where your head is, they can kill you in your, like, head. So it's better not to get used to the smoke. And I said, like, oh, yeah, good to know. Thanks.
We were driving for a couple hours. It became dark and cold. And we arrived to the place where, far away, we could see. it was not, like, even town, but small, like, small kind of village with a few houses.
They said, okay, so this is your station. Obviously, no shower, no TV or anything like that, no computer, no telephone, no internet, of course, no, nothing.
And the smell was the smell of death. When you smell man's sweat together with blood, together with the land, I can remember in my nightmares, I mean, there were only guys. that was kind of, like, a little bit concern me. But you know what? Nobody even thought about sex, because the most important instinct is to survive.
The first night, I didn't sleep at all, and I didn't hear anything. It wasn't any, you know, bombs or gunshots. And then in the morning, around, like, 5 a.m., I felt so cold. It was freezing. And I couldn't even hear any birds singing or anything like that.
It was deadly quiet. And I looked at the guys. They were sleeping like babies.
Over the course of her first day on the front lines, Aliya's friend from the train station, Rashid, became a mentor of sorts to her. He showed her the safest corner of the barracks to sleep in and taught her other best practices for staying alive that he learned on his previous deployment in Chechnya.
I was trying to wash my face. He said, don't do it. And I was like, dude, are you crazy? Like, this is hygienical things. I need to wash my face.
And he said, no, if you're a sniper, because if your face is clean, then the color of the clean skin reflects the light, and then the other sniper can see you and can shoot you really, really well.
Rashid taught Aliya more about concealment and shooting a rifle, and they were signed as buddies and given night lookout duty.
We started to talk a lot, and I kind of like get used to his stupid jokes. And while we were like sitting there, I remember he was asking me questions like, so where did you study? What was your department? Who was your commander? And slowly, slowly, I just opened up to him.
I said, like, you know what? I can tell him, why not? So I told him the whole story from the beginning.
When Aliya got to the part of the story about turning down the advances of her commander, the lieutenant general, Rashid had some strong words about him.
He's like, oh, like that prick? I heard a lot of stories about him. He sent many soldiers to the front line knowing that they would be killed. He still did it. He didn't care about their families, about their lives.
So he just basically sacrificed their lives for nothing. He said he's a very bad commander.
And then I said, well, that's why I'm here. I guess it's just bad luck.
After a few days, Aliya began to realize the full grim nature of her assignment. Shooting at people who she didn't know and couldn't see, who were also shooting at her. And wondering at the same time, was she even on the right side here?
We were attacking civilians. We were fighting normal families. They were protecting their country. We were attacking them.
And then I heard a lot of stories about Chechen men, how cruel they are. How do they torture people? How they would cut you apart just for their pleasure, just to have fun. They would cut off the head of the Russian soldiers and they would send it to either Russian commanders just to kind of like piss them off and scare them. All these like stories made me nauseous.
Aliya didn't know whether these stories were true or just dehumanizing propaganda. But it kept her close to the base and on high alert in case of attack.
We didn't have enough food. And one day, a small troop of my colleague's soldiers decided to go to the village to get some food. I mean, not to get some food, they would basically almost like rob this village, right? So, I mean, the Russian soldiers with guns, hungry. So, of course, the village population would just give wherever they wanted, just to leave them alone and not to kill their families and their kids.
But this time, the raid didn't go as planned.
There was an old guy, old enough to fight, but he still had a gun in the house and he tried to kill my colleagues, but they shot him first.
So, it was terrible, you know. It was terrible because they're like old people in that village who were just killed for nothing.
It's unclear whether one man in the village was killed or several people. But this act of senseless brutality shattered the quiet on the base.
When they brought the food, it was the feeling that this food had like blood, you know, like it's just, you couldn't just even eat it. It's almost like poisoned by the blood of innocent people.
The next day, snipers began shooting at the base. Evidently, the villagers had informed the Chechen militia about what had happened. Now, they were taking revenge. A revenge that, in some respects, Aliya could understand.
It really pissed that mercenaries off. That's why they came and they started to basically kill us. If he wouldn't do it, or if they wouldn't go to the village, you wouldn't have this problem.
Despite Aliya's empathy for what the Chechens were going through, she was also a Russian soldier, the target of these mercenaries. And she had her orders.
Our commander wanted to terminate them by killing them.
So that night, Aliya and Rashid went to their lookout location, knowing that this time they might not come back.
This is the Beverly Hills of the valley.
There was sleet and hail and snow coming down.
Right on the reservation boundary.
All I could think of is, are they going to sniper me out of some tree?
They won't tell you anything. I'm going down in the cave. They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere. If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police and have you removed.
One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Do you recognize my voice?
An exploding house. The Hunt. Family, annihilation. Today. And a disappearing act.
Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand, accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.
From unbelievable romantic betrayals.
The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him.
To betrayals in your own family.
When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath.
Financial betrayal.
This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars.
And life or death deceptions.
She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.
Listen to Betrayal weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Russia has waged a brutal war against Chechen separatists since the 1990s.
The violence began when a former Soviet.
We have fought against the Russian occupation for centuries. We even had our own Holocaust. Stalin deported the entire population.
The minister for defense provided a report on Chechnya. Let me quote from the text. In Russia's interest, this region must be rendered devoid of life.
The Chechens were pretty formidable. They were a strange mix of volunteer local militias, ex-military, and foreign fighters.
This is Dr. Mark Galeotti, who is one of 29 British journalists that the Putin regime banned from Russia in 2022.. He's also the author of several books on Russia, including Putin's Wars.
The Chechens themselves think of themselves as wolves, but they regard the wolf as being essentially something to live up to. But on the one hand, absolutely ferocious in defense of the pack, but one that ultimately depends on and protects the pack.
Because this region and the Caucasus Mountains and the Chechens who live there are very little understood, I've called Dr. Galeotti to help explain the war that Aliyev was fighting in.
Of all the various parts of the Soviet Union, the one that was probably the most unruly, the most reluctant to be under Moscow's control was Chechnya. It had been finally annexed by the Russian Empire back in the mid-19th century. And, essentially, whenever the central government looked weak, the Chechens rebelled.
Dr. Galeotti explains that when the Soviet Union dissolved, Chechnya took the opportunity to declare independence. And though the Russian army tried to stop them, they didn't succeed. This was the first Chechen war.
And in effect, the Chechens fought the Russians to a draw that time.
Then Putin came to power and decided to finish Russian business in Chechnya. But first, he needed a reason to go back to war. A few weeks later, there were several terrorist bombs in Russia. Over 300 were killed.
It wasn't clear who'd done it, but most Russians were ready to blame the Chechens.
But some now say that these events were orchestrated by the spies inside Putin's.
power base, the FSB, successor to the KGB.
I may tell you without any doubt that the Second War was initiated by FSB as a provocation. They provoked Chechnya. This became the Second Chechen War, the one that Aliyev was now caught up in. Here's Dr. Galeotti again, who also hosts the podcast In Moscow's Shadows.
So, essentially, yes, this is very much Putin's war. And also, this was his opportunity to essentially demonstrate to Russians across the country that things were going to be different now. It gave him a chance to pose with tough guy, macho rhetoric, but also make the point that Russia was back.
Even by the lowest standards of war, the Second Chechen War was a brutal and horror-filled conflict on all sides, which included torture, assassination, mass murder of civilians, and suicide attacks.
All civil wars have a tendency to be deeply unpleasant. But in this case, brutality was mobilized as another weapon of war. I mean, there were at least 40,000 civilians who died. We have cases of cities like Grozny being leveled, even when there are civilian populations within. But we also have a huge range of everything, from outright atrocities to just simply heedless brutality.
Looting, for example, was widespread.
This is audio of a Chechen fighter returning a laptop that was looted by Russian forces. How he got it back, we probably don't want to know.
In the end, Putin ultimately won his war. But at what cost?
What happened is essentially Chechnya was brought under control, but it was brought under control firstly by massive levels of brutality, secondly by promising the new Chechen elite huge amounts of money and considerable autonomy.
With this context. now, let's return to Aliyah and her fellow soldier Rashid, as they walk to their lookout point on the Russian-Chechen border, where the looting of Russian troops has led to a retaliatory attack by the Chechen militia.
So we went to our location with Rashid at the small hill. And while we were laying there, I was just looking at the sky. Looking at the watch all the time. 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m. By 5 a.m., I noticed that I was shaking.
I was cold as well. But you know, like this feeling when you're scared so much. It's like your heart is shaking and it gives this shake to all your body.
So 6 a.
m.
, we've heard some gunshots from our side. It wasn't that long, for a few minutes. And Rashid, he touched me with my shoulder and he said, OK, now, like now.
And he pressed the trigger and he shot the enemy.
He said to me, it's simple, now it's your turn. And I saw through the scope, I saw the face with the beard and with the hat. And I stopped breathing at that moment, but I waited. I felt like the blood and the heart beating through my ears, like I could feel that my heart is beating so loud.
Rashid told me, like, do it now.
I pressed the trigger.
And it was a silence. Pressed the trigger. I didn't cry.
I didn't feel anything that time, that moment. I just didn't feel anything. I felt the metallic, you know, metallic, I don't know how to say it. I just felt the strands of the gun and I didn't look again. I just closed my eyes like that.
And then Rashid told me, good job.
Was it a good job? I don't know.
I laid there for maybe an hour in the silence. Rashid also didn't talk.
And then, in the morning later, we returned to our base. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I drank a little bit water, but I couldn't even, I couldn't even eat anything.
When you experience something like that, it's just so much stress. It was like, almost like nauseous. even think about the food.
I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was already dark and only Rashid came to me. He said to me, how do you feel? Like, you? okay?
Like, um, yeah.
And he said, well, let's go, let's go back. We need to, you know, to go back to our position. So I said, like, yeah, let's go.
As Aliyah and Rashid walked together, he spoke to her about his own challenges in coming to terms with a horrible act of killing, trying to help her feel better about the events of the day before and likely the day ahead.
When we were walking and he talked to me, his eyes were always warm, you know, like. he was really kind and he loved nature. He always was, like, looking at the sun and telling, like, it's so beautiful and leaves and trees, and, and he was a perfect sniper and killer. He told me about a wolf, he was a young boy, his father took him for the hunting and he said, I saw a big wolf and he said his eyes were so beautiful. and he said he looked at me and father said, like, don't hesitate, press the trigger.
and he said, I, I couldn't do it because the wolves were so beautiful, like, just beautiful animals with these, like, strong eyes. and he said he felt really bad after.
He, he, he made me to feel a little bit better. I told him, listen, it's still human being and it's still someone's son, perhaps father, brother, husband, and he said to me, never think this way, he said, when I hunt animals, they also have families, but you are the hunter, never think that these people are somehow associated to anyone else, because if you will start to do this, when you hesitate to press the trigger, that's exactly the moment when you will be killed, he said, you just don't think, like, you. aim it, you press the button.
We came to the position, that night. it was quiet, I could hear how the wind was going through the….
As they set up their guns and lay waiting in this eerie, quiet, Aliyah's dread soon came back, despite Rashid's talk.
That smell and that coldness and that disgusting feeling of the metallic, cold weapon in your hands constantly, where your finger is just stuck closer to the trigger and you're always in pressure waiting.
Hi,
it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand, accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality, after your entire world is flipped upside down.
From unbelievable romantic betrayals,
The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him.
To betrayals in your own family,
When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath.
Financial betrayal,
This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars.
And life or death deceptions.
She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.
Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast, Missing in Arizona.
And I'm, Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world.
We cloned his voice using AI. In 2001,.
Police say I killed my family. First mom, then the kids. And rigged my house to explode.
In a quiet suburb.
This is the Beverly Hills of the valley. Before escaping into the wilderness.
There was sleet and hail and snow coming down.
They found my wife's SUV. Right on the reservation boundary. And my dog flew. All I could think of is he's going to sniper me out of some tree. But not me.
Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere.
For two years, They won't tell you anything. I've traveled the nation. I'm going down in the cave. Tracking down clues. They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere.
If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police and have you removed.
Searching for Robert Fisher.
One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Do you recognize my voice?
Join an exploding house. The hunt.
Family annihilation.
Today. And a disappearing act. Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Even after several more nights of stillness, broken by gunfire, Aliyah never became comfortable with the horrible task required to survive. The constant terror, sleeplessness, and discomfort made a way at her.
Like, I came to the point where I just was thinking that I don't care what will happen. I just want to get out. Like you don't care anymore. Even, you know, like at some point you're so scared, you're scared, you're scared, you're scared, and then you, at some point, you're just like so tired to be scared that you're like fuck it. If I will be killed, I don't care anymore.
Like I'm so tired, you know, like it's like you're just so exhausted. You just feel like, even if it will happen to me, it's okay. I saw enough. It's fine. I just want to go to somewhere else, maybe in another world.
But instead, it just got worse. One night in particular, just before a big mission, Aaliyah was plagued by nightmares and found herself praying in her half-sleep.
Please, God, please just get me out of here, please. I don't want to be here. Do something so I can leave this place and I want to go home.
She slept fitfully, and then suddenly, she awoke to noise and chaos all around her.
When I woke up, I felt like something is going on and people like running, and it's some kind of like tension, but I didn't know exactly what's happening.
What was happening is that her base was being pounded by grenades and mortars.
She was in a coma. She was in a coma. She was in a coma.
The half of the base, it was just bombered like that, and the whole, like land and sun and everything, just with all this, you know, like soil, it just flew under my, on the top of my head, like just with a, how do you call it? Like with a,
with a bomb-like pressure.
And because I was laying in the corner, like Rashid gave me that, he gave me that, he gave me that corner because it was the most safest place, he said,
and he gave me that safe place. They all were under the, not all of them, but like 80% of my friends, they were killed.
Parts of bodies were everywhere. I couldn't stand because my left shin, something fall on it, like the wooden, a huge stick, which was like next to my place where I slept. It's like it falls on me, but it falls exactly on my leg and it broke my bone. And I didn't know exactly what happened, but I couldn't stand up and I, when I took this like lent out and all this stuff, I saw the bone, the white bone, which was like out of my machine, through the trousers, which I was wearing all the time. And I couldn't do anything.
I started to scream like, like help, help, but I couldn't hear anyone. The lieutenant was light, but Rashid wasn't.
I just remember Rashid's face laying just next to me, and he didn't have half of his body. It was just his head and arms and just his shoulders.
And he was joking the last time. He said, hey, why don't you marry me? You know, we will be such a good couple. I'll take you to Siberia to introduce to my mom. She'd love you so much.
I was laughing. I said, you silly idiot. I wish I would never say it to them. I wish I would say yes. I felt guilty.
He cared about me, you know, not like others. He never tried to even touch me in a way where he would hate on me or something, like. not like any other man. He was really noble.
Everything was like in a dream. My commander lieutenant was screaming and calling like, is anyone, is anyone, anyone can hear me? And I scream like, here, here, come here. He came with another guys. He looked at me like, like, you know, like what's going, like, what, what happened?
Like, where, where the pain, like you, injured, what? And I show him on the leg, like, yes, yes, I broke my leg. They held me from my arms to get me out. We went out from the, from the base a little bit further, like under the hill. And we sat over there from about like 40 soldiers.
There were only 10 people left, only 10.
All these boys, these boys were like 23,, 22, even, 25.
. They're just little kids. They've, they've didn't seen anything in this life. And they were killed just in front of me. They were just killed.
And that's it, that's it. And when you see like these young kids, like dying for nothing, how do you feel? Like, is it fair, even? Like, where is the justice? Why, why, like, what's the reason of doing that?
You know, like, even like, it doesn't make any sense.
A support team eventually showed up at a military truck, along with two medics who examined Aliyah.
They said to lieutenant, I mean, she's like pointless soldier right now. She, she can't do anything. She can't walk properly. So when they started to untie the bandages, I started to scream.
And they gave me, I think it was morphine or something like that. I don't know. Because I remember that feeling. I was laying just in front of the car and I looked at the sky. And the sky, I remember exactly clouds, and it was blue, so blue that you felt like, it's like a heaven.
And I just closed my eyes and I like passed over.
And in the car, I remember I woke up and I started to scream. And then my commander said, I said, like, relax, rest, rest. It's gone. Just rest.
And I closed my eyes again.
Aliyah's story continues in Episode 11.
If you're experiencing a post-traumatic stress, mental health, or suicidal crisis, you can call or text 988 for immediate support. Veterans can press 1 to be connected with the Veterans Crisis. Line. To Die For is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and written by me, Neil Strauss, with additional writing assistance by Tristan Bankston.
Executive Producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsey. For iHeart Podcasts, Executive Producers are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. Lead Producer and Editor is Tristan Bankston. Additional Editing by Miles Clark and Christian Brown. Supervising Producer, Tracy Kaplan.
Consultants include Nushin Valizadeh, Chelsea Gooden, and Jamie Albright. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original Music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Mixed and Mastered by Dayton Cole. Our Theme Song is Killer Shangri-La by Psychotic Beats, featuring Patti Amour.
Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, Oren Siegel, Becky Jensen, The Nord Group, Meredith Stedman, and Alex Vestmistedt.
Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games. And then, a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my and so many others, forever, rippling out for generations.
Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal Podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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