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Stas Melnichenko: Veteran of all three wars in Yugoslavia. Started out in Alfa, went on to join a Serbian paramilitary unit, Stas eventually became one of the bodyguards for Milosevich's family. According to General Kurkov, "one of our top-notch men in hand-to-hand combat, plus an experienced sniper, which is rare." Below is the complete transcript of his initial employment interview with ProServe, Ltd.:

General Kurkov: Good morning, Stas. I just gave these gentlemen a brief review of your background in Yugoslavia, but why don't you tell them a little about yourself.
Stas: What's there to tell?
Sergei: Let's start with Yugoslavia. What did you do there?"
Stas: Same thing everyone did. Went into the villages and shot the Muslims in the name of preserving the Serbian unity.
Sergei: And then you ended up in Chechnya, I understand. What, exactly, did you do there?
Stas: Exactly? We would surround the villages, call out the village elders and give them our ultimatum: if you don't give up your arms, we'll raze your village to the ground. At night, all men, including boys, would go away into the mountains on the request of the village elders. By the time we rolled in, there were no more weapons or rebels. Only the elderly, women and children. And nobody could leave.
Jack: And why not?
Stas: Because we blocked off the main road, that's why. On approaching any house, I'd fire inside. If anyone jumped out, woman or child, I mowed them down. The guys behind me would torch the bodies with the flamethrowers to get rid of the evidence. We would move through the villages, house by house, firing, throwing grenades into the basements, burning. At one train station we hung ten high school kids, and then six more students that were hiding inside a school. On the outskirts we found about a hundred and thirty people, women, children, old men, anyone who didn't run away. We locked them in a grain elevator, chained the door and then torched it. What we left behind were not ruins, just flat ground.
Jack: Are you saying the Russian soldiers killed everyone in some village and nobody has heard of it?
Stas: Not everyone was killed. Some of the villagers, the ones who survived, were transported to a filtration camp.
Jack: What's a filtration camp?
Stas: You really don't know anything, do you?
Jack: Try me.
Stas: There is this filtration camp in Osinovka. Each room houses twenty to twenty five prisoners, who sleep on the concrete floor. The guards line them up against the wall and practice karate kicks in the head or in the groin. One of our guys liked to put electricity to the bodies, to see them fry. It takes a long time to get used to that smell. If a prisoner tried to untie their hands, the sergeant would cut them off at the wrists. If a prisoner tried to take off the black blindfold, the sergeant would put out his eyes with his thumbs. He was a piece of work from Archangelsk, our sergeant. During one helicopter ride, he dropped three prisoners because he was bored.
Jack: But how is it possible that the world news did not report any of this?"
Stas: How? For the next forty-eight hours we didn't allow anyone to enter Samashki, not even the Red Cross. That gave us plenty of time. Our armored vehicles flattened their bones so that the relatives could not identify them later.
Sergei: And somewhere along the line you became a bodyguard. What can you tell me about that?
Stas: At the end of the last war, President Milosevich had sixty bodyguards protecting his immediate family. I was responsible for the security of his daughter. After defeat of Vojislav Kostunica, all of Milosevich's people were thrown out on the street, including myself. It wasn't safe after they killed Arkan, my former boss, so I came back to Ukraine. And now, there's no money here, either.
 Sergei: Couldn't you go back now, and make your money as a sniper?
 Stas: Sure I could. My old buddies are still prospecting over there, and I know what they would say to me. Here, pal, take this rifle, here is the scope, now get to work. Ilya just returned from Africa. He was a military instructor for those hand-chopping niggers in western Sierra Leone in exchange for blood diamonds, and he barely made it out alive. He told me everything about the eight year-old snipers, the twelve year-old commanders of the murdering brigades and the fourteen year-old prostitutes that castrated those British soldiers.
 Sergei: What about the diamonds?
 Stas: Ilya managed to smuggle out a handful of raw diamonds, not polished yet. That's how he bought a four-room apartment on Repina Street. He's set for life, that's for sure. And me? Last year I tried joining a group in Moscow. I spent six months pounding the pavement, drinking vodka with them, but in the end they wouldn't take me. Too many of their own unemployed soldiers.
 Sergei: It's tough to get a decent job these days.
 Stas: That is why I'm here, ready to work, sir.