More than 60% of the soldiers Putin invited to invade Ukraine come from the endless galaxy of 153 thousand villages scattered in deep Russia. In these “non-places” made of degradation, abandonment and poverty, with almost no access to school or social services, the nikto, the children of nothingness, grow up.  Their only contact with anything outside their village is television, through which Kremlin propaganda turns anger and frustration into state violence.   A Russian proverb says: nikto you are the son of nothing and your name is nobody. Everyday life, human relationships, even the games of a nikto, tell the genesis of a generation of ruthless soldier boys. If you wonder how human beings could have been responsible for the horrors of Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol then look at the horror in which those young men were begotten and raised.