1/ A civil engineer who was mobilised into the Russian army despite ill-health has escaped to Germany and spoken about the chaos and brutality he saw. His regiment was told by its commander: "You came here to die." He was later arrested and tortured for trying to flee. ⬇️ 
2/ 44-year-old Georgy from Lyubertsy near Moscow has told his story to Radio Free Europe. He was mobilised in September 2022 despite serious heart problems and was sent to a training ground where he "wandered aimlessly" and "fired a few times from rusty automatic rifles".
3/ He had protested against being mobilised but was assured initially that he would be sent to a construction battalion, where his skills as a civil engineer would be valuable. Despite this, he was sent to a front-line Russian unit fighting in Ukraine in November 2022.
4/ "The feeling was that no one knows anything, terrible chaos, no coordination, no supplies… It was as if we were transported in a time machine to 1941, when the Germans were advancing on Moscow, complete chaos, only the form was different.
5/ "Late autumn, rain, mud, muddy roads, destroyed villages, war passed over the land."
6/ He and his comrades were sent to a forest near Svatove in the Luhansk region, without raincoats or tools to chop wood for shelters. They bought supplies from local people at their own expense.
7/ "The first days were like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island – surviving in the wild without anything, they didn’t give us anything, we slept on the ground in the rain and snow, lit fires. And I was thinking about how to escape from there.
8/ "I immediately realized that this was a one-way ticket. Judging by the attitude of the officers, the command staff, it was clear that they weren’t considering us as a combat unit, as soldiers,...
9/ ...they had simply brought a portion of cannon fodder that had to play its role and die heroically. It was clear from how they saved on supplies – why feed them and water them if they would be killed tomorrow?
10/ "In the neighbouring forest, there were [Chechen] Akhmatovites and air defence men – and judging by the equipment, it was clear who needed to be protected and who didn’t."
11/ The area was the focus of heavy fighting at the time. At one point his regimental commander, Colonel General Alexander Zavadsky, turned up to give a motivational speech.
12/ "He lined everybody up and said: ‘You came here to die.’ At least he was honest. ‘If you want to go on holiday - 300‘, i.e. wounded, “if you want to go for good – 200”, i.e. killed,’ he said. That's the kind of motivational speech it was."
13/ Georgy managed to escape from the disorganised encampment and hitched a lift to Troitske in the northern Luhansk region, near the Russian border, which was equally chaotic.
14/ "There was Brownian motion – a bunch of mobilised people, no one had anything, everyone was spreading out to neighbouring cities and villages in search of food and materials to set up their daily lives.
15/ "They would arrive in the city, not have time to go to the store – they needed somewhere to spend the night. Some officers tried to help their soldiers, but not all of them – and the hospital’s emergency room was turned into a flophouse."
16/ A local man helped Georgy and three others to travel to a point near the border, which was sealed with a barbed-wire fence. While they were crossing it, a Russian helicopter spotted them and opened fire, killing two of the escapees.
17/ Georgy and the other survivor were captured by FSB border guards and were taken back across the border, where they were imprisoned in an army-run torture centre in a basement in the Luhansk region village of Rozsypne.
18/ The site is a former Ukrainian border service facility which President Zelensky visited in November 2020. It has now been repurposed by the Russian army as a place of pain and terror.
19/ Georgy describes it as "A brand new building, the basement has sandy floors. They nailed together bunks, divided the space in half: for the 'good' ones, who could be re-educated, where I ended up, and for the 'bad' ones, who, as I understood, were not needed."
20/ "People were beaten to death there: we were taken there to clean up, there was even blood on the ceiling. You sit in a stone cell, they take you out to the toilet in the morning and evening, there is no connection with the outside world.
21/ "They feed you poorly, I think so that people suffer from hunger: at 8 in the morning and at noon. And you sit without food until the next day.
People were abused, beaten, tortured there. It was shocking that in the 21st century you encounter such things.
People were abused, beaten, tortured there. It was shocking that in the 21st century you encounter such things.
22/ "I am a person of the previous generation, not young, and we were brought up that there were fascists and our people fought this evil. But it turned out that we ourselves have it, and it was clear that this is not an initiative of some sadists, but a systemic thing.
23/ "Someone specially took people into service and trained them. It was shocking that this was possible – especially when propaganda says that you are going to fight fascism, and then boom –we have a copy of the fascist Gestapo.
24/ "When I arrived, as a 'greeting' they hit me with a stun gun, then beat me up. There are specialists working there – they beat us, but so that there are no injuries. And if they just beat us, then the 'bad' ones they killed. Fortunately, I did not see it, I only heard.
25/ "They did it without witnesses."
Georgy suffered a heart attack under torture, but managed to get some medical treatment. The army brought him back to Svatove with other refuseniks who agreed under duress to return to the war.
Georgy suffered a heart attack under torture, but managed to get some medical treatment. The army brought him back to Svatove with other refuseniks who agreed under duress to return to the war.
26/ He was sent to a hill west of the town where thousands of men who had left their units were forced to live in the open with no food or shelter. (Other refuseniks have given similar accounts.)
https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1665465293936922625
27/ While some men waited there for days or weeks, Georgy was almost immediately press-ganged into a Storm Z unit, comprised of convicts and deserters, who were routinely used as cannon fodder in assaults. However, his frontline career did not last long.
28/ "They took me to the 'zero line' and told me to wait for a combat mission. Nearby, sappers were unloading explosives from a KamAZ [truck], they had just finished when a shell landed and everything exploded.
29/ "There was nothing left of the sappers, we were 50 meters away, we were crushed by the blast wave. I suffered a concussion, a broken leg and another heart attack."
30/ This time, Georgy was evacuated back to Russia on a fuel tanker. The driver ordered him off the truck when they came under fire, but he managed to order a taxi to Moscow. He was able to get treatment from a friendly doctor and went into hiding in the countryside.
31/ Georgy was arrested while making a visit to Moscow in December 2023 and was flown to Kaliningrad, where he was assigned to the 7th Guards Motorised Rifle Regiment. He soon realised that he had been imprisoned again, albeit in better conditions.
32/ "In fact, it's a military prison, an old military base, still German – they say the SS 'Death's Head' division was based there, even the oak parquet flooring from those times has been preserved. In one of the barracks they set up a prison for people like me.
33/ "Access to the doctors is under escort, to the canteen too. Only you don't sit in the basement, but on the second floor. And they feed you three times a day, not two."
34/ Despite his two heart attacks and a broken leg, he was "miraculously" declared fit, as were other injured soldiers being held there. "I saw many there who, with a wave of a pen, turned from practically disabled into healthy people. Not only those with a heart problem."
35/ "A person had a third of his stomach cut off – he is fit and healthy. Another one froze his feet in the war, they cut off half of his foot, and he is also fit."
36/ Georgy was able to escape a third time, in May 2024, when his new regiment's corrupt commander began building himself a dacha outside the city, using the soldiers as free labour. "It was illegal, so there was no escort, [we were] under the major’s responsibility."
37/ "I saw that no one was watching, and there was a city behind the fence. I also consulted with experienced people – more than half of the people in prison were convicts. They told me how to hide, one guy gave me a T-shirt and pants to change into civilian clothes."
38/ "Plus, that major told me that there was chaos everywhere, constant mistakes, and that we were in Kaliningrad – “on an island”, where, most likely, “no one will put a guard on you”. That is, when you come to buy a ticket, it will not set off any alarms."
39/ He climbed over a fence and escaped back to the city, from where he was able to get a flight to St Petersburg, where he reunited with his wife and his passport, and then flew to Belarus. From there, he went to Tashkent in Uzbekistan before eventually going to Georgia.
40/ Georgy left Georgia after the October 2024 electoral victory of the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party, lived in Montenegro for a while, and then applied for asylum in Germany along with his wife and children. They had remained in Russia but were harassed by the authorities.
41/ His story has been verified by the dissident organisation "Farewell to Arms", which supports conscientious objectors and anti-war deserters. The family is now hoping to rebuild their lives in Germany. /end
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