“They tied me to a tree and said: ‘We’re gonna put you down now.’ There were 30 bodies in a ditch nearby”: Confessions of a Russian deserter

RU

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“A week ago I was at home watching anime, and now I'm being sent to the front lines”

In the fall of 2023, at night, I went out of the house to the nearest store. A patrol car stopped, asked for documents. I didn't have my ID on me, so they went to the police station. They started to run me through, said that I had a summons, handed me a paper like a mobilization order or something like that. “That's it, they said, you'll be on your way to the front line in three days. Is mobilization over? Mobilization hasn’t ended. Where is the decree saying it’s over? It's still on, it’s just selective. [They call people up] when necessary. There's a summons for you. Why didn't you come to the military enlistment office?”

And they pretended to take pity on me: “Go and sign a contract. You can go to [the enlistment center on] Yablochkova [Street in Moscow]. If you sign the contract, you'll help in a hospital somewhere.”

I came home when they let me go, sat and thought till morning, weighed everything. I thought, “Well, if they're sending me, what's the difference? I'll go sign a contract, maybe it'll work. On Saturday I signed the contract, and on Tuesday I was shipped out. They sent me to an assault company. About a week later I was already on the front line.

I didn't understand anything at that time. A week ago I was sitting at home, watching anime and streams, working, leading a normal life, and then they want to send me to Ukraine.

None of us were bothered for the first three days while we were settling in. Then they started pulling people out slowly, with the first guys sent out to dig trenches. There's 500 meters of open terrain, roughly speaking, to the village. Those 500 meters, well, they’re impossible to cross. You’re completely out in the open. There’s one machine gun crew there; it can easily mow down 100 people. The only cover was a disabled tank in the middle. And our ingenious commanders had this solution: let us dig in around the tank, use it as a transit point to carry on moving forward. It was an incredibly stupid decision, because there was no difference between 250 meters of wide-open terrain and 500 meters. 30 seconds in the open, and you’re already f*cked.

The first guys were sent there in fives. As I remember now, four groups of five went out. All 20 men were killed that very evening. No one came out alive. No one even made it to that tank. The next day they sent another 20 men. They didn't make it either.

Everyone’s talking about FPV drones at the moment. But actually ordinary surveillance drones, they’re also very important and dangerous, simply because you have eyes everywhere — you see everything. There were probably 15 or 20 of them floating around there, watching everything. And the commanders came up with the idea to send people out “in the gray,” when the sun was already setting or rising. That’s when the drones don’t see as well. They sent more people out there, and they got f*cked too. Because even five people running out is a big group — you can still see them.

They buried close to 30 people in two or three days. Then they figured out that you could send two people instead of five. Two of these groups managed to secure a position under this tank. They dug in, and the news began to broadcast that we had practically taken this village, that we were already there. They said that we had gone in from all sides. But we weren’t even close, we hadn’t even reached it. People were being led like cattle to the slaughter — just because the news said we had already captured it. I had a commanding officer who used to work as a security guard in a supermarket chain, and he f*cking dreamed of seeing himself on Channel One like he was some kind of warrior. He didn’t give a f*ck about how many people died…

The guys dug in under the tank — but they needed ammo, food, water. And that’s how 70 more people were killed — all in a week, running to and from that tank.

There were no gun battles because no one reached the positions. They say on the news that small arms clashes are the worst. No. The worst is when you come out of your dugout and realize that the enemy can see you — they can waste you at any moment. I went out to the toilet, came back in, and 30 seconds later, two mortars hit the place where I had just gone to relieve myself.

There were a lot of drones. It feels like the Ukrainian army has a 50-fold advantage when it comes to UAVs. The operator could fail, or the wind could be strong, the “bird” could fall, and the guys were forced to go out to the minefields to retrieve it. Imagine a chunk of land and four drones flying around it. They make their drop and just as they're leaving, the next four are flying in. And in the distance, there's another five. And they're all adjusting mortars, artillery. It goes on like that for days on end.

If you've been spotted by a drone, you can't go back into the dugout. The operator sees a glowing dot, and suddenly it disappears — that means your target’s gone inside somewhere. A drone flies and strikes that position at once, and you’re down another five people at least.

“They told me to cut his arm off, inject him with everything you’ve got”

In two weeks we were down to 15-20 people out of 250, 10 of which were staff. Clerks, all sorts of platoon commanders, company commanders. There are very few mobilized men left. The rest are contract soldiers. About 40% of casualties are killed. The rest are the “300s” — the wounded. Of these, almost half are heavily wounded (that is, they don’t have arms and legs, they’re disabled for life). When I arrived, that village was still more or less intact. Three weeks later it was gone, ruins. There were mountains of corpses.

I didn't go on assault missions. I had a very long argument with the commander. I said: “I'm not going anywhere to shoot anyone, you can kill me right here. I’m on evacuation (I was pulling out wounded men for twenty-four hours), so that’s where I’ll stay. You can do whatever you want with it.” I used to run to the tank where the guys were dug in — just like everybody else. I didn't bring them provisions; I pulled the wounded out.

I don't have any medical training. I've never dealt with blood. And then I had to pull a guy out on my fourth week there. He was lying there wounded for three days. He had bandaged his own arm and leg. I don't know how he survived. His arm had already started to rot. Necrosis had set in. “What should I do?” I asked. They tell me, “Cut his arm off. Inject him with everything you've got, or he could die of shock.” I got myself together and went. I chopped it off with a wood chopping axe. I lopped it off on the fourth try. They radioed me on how to do it. I didn't sleep for two days. When we loaded him, he was alive. He got to the first line alive too. I don’t know what happened to him after that.

There was another guy — his jaw was torn off. He didn’t have part of his arm up to the shoulder. They didn't want to take him away. The company commander said, “I don't want to do this for the sake of one man.” After 24 hours, the guy just said, “I'd rather die.” He knew he was done for. And that’s it, he just bled out to death.

The dead were rarely taken away. It was either someone’s personal initiative or the body was easy to access — when it wasn’t too far from the dugout. An 18-19 year old guy was deployed with me, an ordinary guy from the country. He used to be a tractor driver. He came to the military enlistment center on his own to serve as a conscript, but they slipped him a contract — and he signed without even looking at it. A week and a half later he was already on the front line. His relatives sent a letter to the prosecutor's office claiming that he was forced to sign. The battalion commander was really offended and had him sent right into the thick of it. I pulled out that guy’s body later.

I was sent to pick up a wounded guy once and they gave me a bag of medical supplies to hand over: bandages, water… I come out to this open area and see a bunch of fallen trees. I'm out there and I hear a bird practically above me. I see that the terrain is hilly, there’s logs all over the place, and there are gaps under them. I dive under one and crawl further, where the logs are tighter. I’m already in the middle and the earth under me feels soft and loose — and the smell is really strong. I look underneath and I see the uniforms — I see dead guys. They've been there for three or four months, their bodies are decomposing. I was just crawling over corpses.

I started panicking. I hear the bird above me. I realize that she sees me, she knows I'm here. I realized I needed to get the f*ck out of here right away. If she hits these logs, they for sure won’t save me. I start to crawl out from under them. I get to my feet and then realize that I’m stiff as a board. I’m in a daze. I hear a thud — the drone hit the logs behind me. I somehow managed to gather myself, turned around in the opposite direction, and ran. That was scary as f*ck.

“The commander’s drinking ended up getting me hit”

The commander drank all the time. Maybe he was dealing with stress or something, but he was clearly an unprepared man. His drinking ended up getting me hit. He told me to go to headquarters and get a new bird — a drone. I said, “Look, we have another bird, we can get it up. We'll definitely make it through the night. Why would I go out there now? If I go out, they’ll waste me immediately. Night ‘birds’ fly with thermal imaging. They can see you from a mile away — you’re a shining light on a black screen. The way to HQ is through an open field, it’ll be impossible not to see me.” But they sent me anyway.

I got to HQ and picked up the bird. They give me another package. “What's in it?” I ask. He says it's for the commander. I look in the bag, and there's two bottles — vodka and some cognac. The commander wanted to get drunk and they sent me to pick up the booze. I'm on my way back through the open field and I hear a humming sound above me. I look up and there's a drone. And then — boom. I fall to the ground. I don't understand anything. My only thought is, if I lose my legs, I'll just shoot myself in the head — that way I won't have to suffer. I look down, my legs are still there, all bloody, but still there. Thank God.

I dumped the booze bag and crawled to the nearest cellar. I get on the radio: “Take me away, I'm wounded. I can’t walk. I bandaged myself.” “We're not taking you,” they reply. “It's too dangerous.” And I get it. They're not gonna take me because they’re right — it is too dangerous. I’m shaking all over. I have a tremor. I’d probably lost a liter of blood by then. And then I decided to crawl back. I almost got to the evacuation point, except I missed it by about 500 meters to the left.

Everyone drinks. Some commanders are on either promedol, an opioid, or bath salts. I saw one dude on bath salts — he was just like in all the videos [on the Internet]. The ones on promedol usually drool. Promedol is an anesthetic that's given to everybody. It's a very old Soviet narcotic analgesic. It has a pronounced narcotic effect — you take it and you sit there drooling. Everyone is supposed to be given promedol — one capsule or two. I don't remember exactly, but they don't give them to everybody. They were given to them on paper — the reports said that we were given a first aid kit. You've been given a first aid kit, but there's no promedol in it. Where is it? Somebody must’ve taken it for themselves, right? That’s how they had a constant dose of the drug.

The commander of the neighboring unit had a special man — a promedol addict — who would do anything for a dose. He'd run around searching dead bodies. Say you needed a rifle scope or a new piece of armor. You would get him promedol, and he’d run right to the line of contact to loot corpses, almost to the Ukrainian positions.

“They tied me to a tree and said: ‘That’s it, they’re gonna put you down now’”

There were also cases of people not following orders or refusing to go somewhere where they were asked. That person was then brought either to the commander, or, if he's too lazy to do it, they’ll ask his minions, the suck-ups — I can't call them anything else. They’re not human. They bring him to a tree, duct tape his hands and feet, and fix him to the tree so that he doesn't run away. And they shoot him at point-blank range from 5-10 meters out. I didn’t see the executions personally, but judging by the corpses that I saw, it’s all true.

Or they’ll take you to the commander and put two armored vests on you. The commander gets up and shoots at the vests with an automatic weapon. Even if there’s two vests — two vests can usually withstand an assault rifle — all your ribs will be broken. And you just slowly die. Or they make you put on a helmet and shoot you in the helmet. You won’t have a skull after that.

My company had two people “zeroed out” [executed — The Insider]. I don't know the details because I was in the field pulling people out at the time. I came in and asked: “Where are they?” I won't say the call signs, but where are those two guys? And I’m told they've been executed.

We didn't have that in our company that often because the casualty rate was high. But that was common in neighboring units, where they had not 250, but 1,000 or 1,500 people.

I had another story. I have to go forward to our positions to bring them supplies, and I hear a Baba Yaga flying ahead. I'm not going there for sure, because that’s suicide. I veer to the left knowing that there are neighboring units there. In about 700 meters I turn left. Some of our men catch me and say, “You're one of the mobilized guys.” I reply that I'm not. He says, “Why are you f*cking lying to us?” I reply: “Take my military ID. Look, my military ID says I'm a contract soldier.” He says “don't f*ck with us.” They tied me to a tree. They were looking for some mobilized guy who deserted or tried to run away. They tied me up and said, “Well, we’re going to waste you now.” There was a big hole behind the tree and there were probably 20, 30 people lying dead in the hole.

I was saved by someone on the radio that called in and said they found that guy who tried to run away. I don't know why, but I feel sorry for the guy. I guess they executed him. They untied me and sent me to the commander. He wasn’t drunk, but he seemed to be on promedol. He sat there drooling — and offered me 30 grams of vodka to calm me down.

They say it's common practice there. They usually recruited those who came back from the hospital after wounds or with poor health, who they weren’t sorry to see die. If a person doesn’t execute an order, you ought to call the military prosecutor's office. Military prosecutors, of course, aren’t going out into the field, and there’s no one to take them away. You can't put them in a pit either — who’s going to dig it? They only dig them for bodies. Nobody would dig cellars either. They were forced to dig trenches for themselves — right up to the latrines, because commanders were afraid to go out to the barn at night. They made us dig luxury dug-outs, close to two stories, while the boys had to make do with wooden planks and a little grass on top.

“There aren’t many patriots here — they don’t usually live long”

No one there’s openly opposing the regime or saying that “we're going to overthrow Putin” and all that. Of course, they say [Putin] stirred some sh*t up that nobody wants. Even when the “patriots” arrive, very soon they start saying: “What the f*ck are we doing here, what the f*ck do we need this for?” There are “ultra-patriots” here too, but they don't usually live long. They’re the first ones to run — and the first to be put down.

There was a 54-year-old man. His wife had cancer. He came not even for money, but because he needed a soldier’s benefit from the government to treat his wife. He said: “I know that people have to be killed here, I’ve made my choice. If they kill me, well, f*ck it, my wife will get five million [rubles; $58,800]. She’ll be cured, and my children will live well. He lived in the countryside, with a 35,000-ruble [$410] salary, three kids, and a sick wife. What do you say to him? ‘Go retrain and work in IT?’”

Two Wagner guys were deployed with us. One of them pussied out and went straight to the military police. He ended up executing his own guys. I'm talking about his own guys. You have to understand — it's not like they're from my unit, but it's like shooting them in the back. It's one thing if you don't want to go to war yourself, right? Or if you're against this war. It's another thing when — I just don't understand this logic, you come in just because you want the dough — and you waste everybody you see. And the second guy — he was at the front for about a week, managed to borrow money from about everyone there, and bounced. He claimed he was off to buy drones in Belgorod and just disappeared.

Our commander used to sell passes to leave the unit at the rate of 10,000 rubles (approximately $115) a day. That is, if you’ve already served for six months, you’re officially entitled to vacation time, but they won't let you go. You want a vacation? Hand over 10,000 rubles a day.

“Guns are being shipped out to Russia in body bags”

It’s scary, because you realize that all these people, some of them will survive one way or another. These commanders, those who suck up to these commanders, even ordinary people who maybe didn't even want to be there but whose psyche will be destroyed. They’ll all come back. What will they do once they’re back home? It's scary, disgusting — just absolutely disgusting. You're not a human being there at all. The 1990s are a f*cking joke compared to all this. When these people come from the war with blood on their hands, with broken psyches, who were in the same companies, units and so on, they’ll start to band together, and these smaller bands will start to group into bigger gangs.

Russia is up to its ass in guns right now, I'm sure, because we've had stories of guns being smuggled out with dead bodies. That's how they're shipped out — with dead bodies, right in the body bags. You can probably buy an AK for, like, 40,000 rubles [$470] in Russia right now. Say you have a corpse in a black bag, and they dump three or four assault rifles in the bag. As it was explained to me, the corpses are still searched when they are taken out. But they take these guns apart or hide them separately somewhere.

They take them to Russia, they file down the serial numbers — and sell them. It's big business. They make a lot of money. Imagine how many people are being killed over there. Obviously, nobody's running around and collecting them. No one’s keeping count. If three, four, or five guns are being shipped out with one body, then you can arm a small army, that's for sure.

“A war for f*ck-all”

If Ukraine maintained the same pace I saw in our area, in most areas, then here’s how many Russians were killed during the entire invasion, based on my own calculations — the heavily wounded, the “300s,” and the dead, the “200s,” together. Well, there must be about 400,000 people for sure. I mean, imagine a city with 40% of its population killed, while everyone else is crippled.

I don't even know. I read a story in the news recently. They say people are surrendering. I don't understand how they do it at all. We have minefields in front, barrier troops in the back — you're not going anywhere. The problem with minefields is that because people are so quickly executed, no one has an accurate map of the minefields. I mean, the sappers are throwing around mines, and they don't realize where they're throwing them. You go a little to the right, a little to the left, you blow up — and you have to walk 10 kilometers at least.

To the people who think they want to sign a contract, I say: “Guys, get yourself a gun, and shoot yourself in the head.” The outcome is exactly the same. If you think you'll make money and come back, and everything will be great, believe me, I've seen so many of those types out there. You're not coming back. You're not coming back in one piece. Is 5 million rubles worth a leg? And then what are you gonna do? Is your mom going to wipe your ass for the rest of your life?

We’re not talking about if you think that there are Nazis in Ukraine or something — there are no Nazis there, just ordinary people. You have to understand that, roughly speaking, you're going to go kill your neighbor. Can you live with that? For the rest of your life? This war isn’t worth it. It's not a war for the Motherland, it's not a war for justice, it's not a war for freedom. It's a war for f*ck all. It's a war for a grandfather that’s completely off his rocker — he’s gone and killed hundreds of thousands of people for f*ck all. You're not liberating anybody out there. I'll tell you more — even the grandpa that's sending you to war, he doesn't believe he's liberating anybody. He doesn't give a sh*t about any of this. And nobody gives a sh*t about you either.

And if you get pinned down, you better run. If you don’t have anything — if you’ve got no money, then take out some loans, and use them to get the f*ck outta there. What do you have to lose? They’ll send you back to the front line either way. To put it simply, you can always try.

The Insider verified the identity of the former soldier and confirmed that he had indeed escaped from the front line.

This article was first published in Russian on July 31, 2024.