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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/17/i-dont-see-justice-in-this-war-russian-soldier-exposes-rot-at-core-of-ukraine-invasion)
Pavel Filatyev knew the consequences of what he was saying. The ex-paratrooper understood he was risking prison, that he would be called a traitor and would be shunned by his former comrades-in-arms. His own mother had urged him to flee Russia while he still could. He said it anyway.
“I don't see justice in this war. I don't see truth here,” he said over a tucked-away cafe table in the Moscow financial district. It was his first time sitting down in person with a journalist since returning from the war in Ukraine.
“I am not afraid to fight in war. But I need to feel justice, to understand that what I'm doing is right. And I believe that this is all failing not only because the government has stolen everything, but because we, Russians, don't feel that what we are doing is right.”
Two weeks ago, Filatyev went on to his VKontakte social media page and published a 141-page bombshell: a day-by-day description of how his paratrooper unit was sent to mainland Ukraine from Crimea, entered Kherson and captured the seaport, and dug in under heavy artillery fire for more than a month near Mykolaiv - and then how he eventually was wounded and evacuated from the conflict with an eye infection.
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Filatyev, who served in the 56th Guards air assault regiment based in Crimea, described how his exhausted and poorly equipped unit stormed into mainland Ukraine behind a hail of rocket fire in late February, with little in terms of concrete logistics or objectives, and no idea why the war was taking place at all. “It took me weeks to understand there was no war on Russian territory at all, and that we had just attacked Ukraine,” he said.
At one point, Filatyev describes how the ravenous paratroopers, the elite of the Russian army, captured the Kherson seaport and immediately began grabbing “computers and whatever valuable goods we could find”. Then they ransacked the kitchens for food.
“Like savages, we ate everything there: oats, porridge, jam, honey, coffee ... We didn't give a damn about anything, we'd already been pushed to the limit. Most had spent a month in the fields with no hint of comfort, a shower or normal food.
“What a wild state you can drive people to by not giving any thought to the fact that they need to sleep, eat and wash,” he wrote. “Everything around gave us a vile feeling; like wretches we were just trying to survive.”
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“I know it will sound savage to a foreign reader,” he said, describing a fellow soldier stealing a computer. “But [the soldier] knows that this is worth more than one of his salaries. And who knows if he'll be alive tomorrow anyway. So he takes it. I'm not trying to justify what he's done. But I think it's important to say why people act like this, to understand how to stop them ... What a person will do in these kinds of extreme situations.”
He railed at length against what he called the “degradation” of the army, including the use of dated kit and vehicles that left Russian soldiers exposed to Ukrainian counterattacks. The rifle he was given before the war was rusted and had a broken strap, he said.
“We were just an ideal target,” he wrote, describing travelling to Kherson on obsolete and unarmoured UAZ trucks that sometimes stood in place for 20 minutes. “It was unclear what the plan was - as always no one knew anything.”
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Filatyev's original plan was to publish his memoir and immediately turn himself in to the police. But Osechkin, the activist, told him to reconsider while urging him repeatedly to flee the country. Until this week, he had refused to do so.
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The Guardian has not been able to independently verify all the details of Filatyev's story, but he has supplied documents and photographs showing he was a paratrooper with the 56th airborne regiment stationed in Crimea, that he was hospitalised with an eye injury sustained while “performing special tasks in Ukraine” in April and that he had written directly to the Kremlin with his complaints about the war before going public.
Old photographs show Filatyev as a teenager in a blue-and-white telnyashka (the traditional blue and white undershirt worn by military personnel) among his fellow soldiers, then hanging from a carousel during paratrooper training, then, already older, clean-shaven in tan camouflage posing with a rifle in Crimea before the war began.
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“They say that the heroism of some is the fault of others,” he said. “It's the 21st century, we started this idiotic war, and once again we're calling on soldiers to carry out heroic deeds, to sacrifice themselves. What's the problem - are we not dying out at it is?”
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Filatyev fled the country via an undisclosed route sometime after Saturday evening, when he headed off to find a hostel to spend the night. Two days later, Osechkin announced Filatyev had managed to escape Russia “before his arrest”. It is still unclear whether or not he has been charged formally with any crime in Russia.
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Sitting along the busy streets of Moscow for possibly the last time, he said he hoped this would all come to an end after popular protests like during the Vietnam war. But for now, he said, that seemed far off.
“I am just terrified of what happens next,” he said, imagining Russia fighting for total victory despite the terrible cost. “What will we pay for that? Who will be left in our country? ... For myself I said that this is a personal tragedy. Because what have we become? And how can it get any worse?”
