Thread by @RichardJSpencer

This is an extraordinary 🧵 in which a Russian soldier complains about his treatment at the hands of his officer and confesses to a murder - exactly the same murder which, by total coincidence, I described in a piece from the village of Andriivka, west of Kyiv, months ago.

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1562874112707801088

I was taken by @jackhillphoto to the garden in the village where he had photographed the body of Ruslan Yeremchuk. From that start, we built up a picture of life in Andriivka and neighbouring villages while it was home to the famous Russia "column of tanks" in March-April.

Yeremchuk was one of three men shot in the back of the head as suspected informers on the same day. Frolkin, the Russian soldier, was traced months later - he took a selfie on a stolen phone which he left behind, and facial recognition to a journalist to his social media page.

In the interview described in this thread, he confesses to being part of the hit squad that on their colonel's orders killed the three men, and to having fired the shot that killed Yeremchuk.

Reassuringly, the interview (and that with another soldier from the same unit) confirms pretty much all the details of events in the village as Jack and I reconstructed them weeks after the Russians left. Our original story here:
thetimes.co.uk/article/partis…

My follow up story on Frolkin's confession here:
thetimes.co.uk/article/russia…

Many props to @istories_media and their reporter Ekaterina Fomina (who I can't find on Twitter) for tracking down Frolkin and getting him to confess.