1/ A Russian soldier who has fled to the West for asylum has described life in an occupied frontline Ukrainian district. He describes children being abducted, wounded soldiers being sent into assaults, corrupt and incompetent officers, and a tank unit relying on film props. ⬇️ 
2/ Despite opposing the war, 22-year-old web designer Evgeny was rounded up in a mobilisation raid on the Moscow metro. He was designated to be a sapper, but received no training – "all this time we were just digging holes." His unit was eventually sent to Ukraine.
3/ They were "dropped off in a damp forest near Tokmak in Zaporizhzhia [region]" and made their way to the nearby village of Solodka Balka, about 8 km from the front line. The village is a Russian defensive stronghold with substantial trench systems nearby.
4/ "We didn’t know where to get food and water. Somewhere in the forest they threw out supplies for the motorised riflemen, who took everything. Something was allocated for us there, but we weren’t warned about it.
5/ "We didn’t know the radio channel that reported the delivery of water – we went begging for it in the village.
6/ "We also gave money for gasoline to a local old man so that he would take us for food – we had to change into civilian clothes, since we weren’t allowed into the city [Tokmak] without an order."
7/ Three months later he was sent further to the rear, to the town of Molochansk near Tokmak. It had a pre-war population of about 6,000 and was occupied by the Russians at the start of the full-sclae invasion. Evgeny recalls:
8/ "There were surprisingly many locals, not only elderly people, but also schoolchildren. The prices are crazy, a push-button phone in a store cost 20 thousand rubles ($249). And no one has a job.
9/ "When the gubernatorial "elections" were held in occupied Zaporizhzhia, we were assigned to guard the school, and we watched as a girl from the 10th grade got into a car with a soldier from the Ossetian group, it is clear why.
10/ "In general, everything was gloomy, I knew that somewhere nearby people were being tortured, I knew that children were being taken from Molochansk to Russia, that is, kidnapped, that both locals and ours were ending up in torture basements."
11/ Evgeny's account is possibly corroborated by a June 2023 video, in which a captured Russian soldier speaks of soldiers from the Chechen Akhmat unit raping children in Molochansk and Tokmak. (Evgeny may be confusing Chechens and Ossetians.)
12/ As has been commonplace along the front, wounded soldiers were sent back into battle without treatment. "The Russian soldiers also had no rights, they can do whatever they want with you. A wounded person can easily be sent back to the assault.
13/ "For example, one returned with a non-working leg, he was sent back to the front, they didn’t even remove the shrapnel in the hospital. They treated junior officers the same way."
Evgeny says that his commanders were both incompetent and corrupt.
Evgeny says that his commanders were both incompetent and corrupt.
14/ "For example, our company had a commander. The generals, apparently guided by old maps, ordered a platoon to be sent to mine a forest already occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
15/ "The commander told his superiors that they had gone crazy. He was almost 60, two months before [compulsory] demobilisation [due to age], they simply removed him, put another commander in place, and the platoon was sent there anyway.
16/ "No one died, by pure chance, only one person was injured, and eight soldiers who refused to go were assigned to the “Storm Z” detachment: the situation is surreal."
17/ Even more surreal was the fact that his regiment's tank company initially had no tanks. They eventually received armoured vehicles donated by the film company Mosfilm, principally 70-year-old T-55s and PT-76s. (This happened in 2023 but was only reported in November 2024.)
18/ According to Evgeny, corruption was rife in the army. He says that a soldier could buy his way out of an assault squad for 500,000 rubles ($6,222 - nearly half the average yearly wage in Russia). An officer could buy a safe posting in Moscow for 2 million ($24,900).
19/ The men received little equipment and had to buy it much of it themselves. In general, Evgeny had a quiet war, only going on two combat missions – to destroy a cache of grenades and an unexploded UAV. He was given leave after eight months and decided to desert.
20/ From Minsk in Belarus, he flew to Armenia, went to Georgia, and flew from there to Bosnia, making his way to France in October 2024, where he applied for asylum. However, his parents reported him to the Russian authorities for deserting.
21/ Evgeny says: "My mother loves Putin, she made my father go to the police and report me missing. I found out about it from friends. I think my mother acted emotionally, in her system of values it is acceptable."
22/ Evgeny's asylum bid in France was eventually rejected in early 2025. He was deported to back to Croatia, where he is currently pursuing legal action – supported by European human rights activists and NGOs – to enable him to stay. /end
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
