Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ A Russian lieutenant who deserted from the Russian army after serving under a commander who murdered his own men for their salaries has spoken of his experiences in Ukraine. His unit was wiped out at Krynki and he witnessed soldiers being whipped and executed with grenades. ⬇️

2/ Daniil from Volgograd was one of the original batch of 300,000 men mobilised from September 2022 onwards. He had never previously served in the army, and was given minimal training before deployment – firing a single magazine of cartridges "for show".

3/ Despite his inexperience, he was made a lieutenant in the Black Sea Fleet Marine Corps. His first commander in occupied Crimea "was constantly smoking weed" and disciplined the men and soldiers under his command with an electric shock device confiscated from some Dagestanis.

4/ In February 2023 his unit deployed to the left bank of the Dnipro in the occupied part of the Kherson region. Daniil says the men lived in fear of Ukrainian partisans, who were blamed for the death of a soldier who was found naked in the forest, with matches in his eyes.

5/ Daniil and his men then spent a relatively calm six months at Enerhodar near the destroyed Kakhovka dam, before the Ukrainians crossed the river further downstream to establish a bridgehead at Krynky. The Russians were taken by surprise and responded incoherently.

6/ "The Russian military screwed up everything there – alcoholism at the positions played a role. And there was also a rumour that one officer helped the Ukrainian Armed Forces for money – he showed them the paths."

7/ "There were few Ukrainians on the bank itself, but they were well fortified. The right bank of the Dniepro is much higher than ours – we were in the palm of their hand. They also had a battalion "Birds of Magyar", completely specialised in UAVs."

8/ "Their barge, reinforced with concrete, sailed along the Dnipro with impunity, from which they launched drones. There were a lot of drones – swarms of eight. A tank was shooting from the other bank, and artillery – the positions were well-aimed."

9/ "Our air defence was not particularly effective."

Russian commanders became enraged at the Ukrainians' tenacity and threw assault group after assault group against the bridgehead, incurring huge losses, including Daniil's entire unit.

10/ "To be clear, our entire battalion – about 200 people from the force present on the scene – was gone in two weeks: some were 200 [dead], some were 300 [wounded], some refused, like me."

https://x.com/GloOouD/status/1740011375118946496

11/ Coincidentally, the scale of the Marines' losses has been corroborated independently by a recent post on the 'Private Gubarev' Telegram channel.

12/ The author writes that he met a soldier from the 810th Marine Brigade who told him that "440 people entered Krynki, 200 left. 500 people entered Kursk, 40 left."

13/ Daniil's own detachment was virtually wiped out on 9 December 2023: "The platoon consisted of ten people, and they were immediately destroyed in their positions by drones and a tank."

14/ "Wounded and shell-shocked, they decided to retreat without orders: the gates of the house where they were were knocked out by one kamikaze drone, and immediately after that, a second one flew in and exploded."

15/ "On 9 December, I was called and sent with another platoon to help. I didn't make it to the position."

The experience left Daniil with a worsening hernia, heart problems and panic attacks, which left him unable to act.

16/ Daniil says that his battalion commander grew angry at his inability and "called me and yelled, 'You moron, what are you doing?' He kept me on edge for about an hour, hit me on the helmet, tried to strangle me.

17/ "In the end, I refused to fight for moral and psychological reasons, they disarmed me, sent me to the basement, where I had to put [dead] people into bags."

18/ He and several other refuseniks were themselves tied up into bags and transported for 24 hours "like firewood” in the bed of a Ural truck. They went to a 'rehabilitation centre' in the Luhansk region. Daniil was thrown around so severely that he sustained a fractured pelvis.

19/ He was transferred to an assault group in the 114th Brigade, where those who continued to refuse to fight were thrown into a six-metre deep open-air pit with no shelter from the midwinter cold. Things were hardly better for the men outside the pit.

20/ "They made us run eight kilometers in full gear, in body armor and with an auomatic rifle, climb a 30-meter-high waste heap three times. I couldn't do this with my fractures – for this they beat me and drove me forward, shooting at my legs.

21/ "But I didn't care anymore, I told them several times: 'Zero me already, shoot me.'"

To make matters worse, Daniil found that he had been assigned to the command of Vladimir Novikov, callsign Bely ('White'), a commander of exceptional brutality even by Russian standards.

22/ Daniil says that Novikov customarily carried a double-barreled shotgun while berating his subordinates. Men had their ears cut off for infractions, and they were chained to a post to be beaten with whips and clubs. Some refuseniks were executed with grenades.

23/ In September 2024, Russian military authorities arrested Novikov and rescued 17 men whom he was imprisoning and torturing in dog cages. He was stealing their salaries, had executed a number of other soldiers, and was covering up their deaths.

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1857175070197637319

24/ By this time, Daniil's condition had worsened to the point that he was virtually immobilised. He was refused hospital treatment but was allowed to see civilian doctors, who diagnosed his hernia and two fractures in his pelvis.

25/ He spent six months in a makeshift medical centre before managing to bribe a medical officer to protect him from being sent back to the fighting and allow him to go back to Russia. "He, a former Wagnerite, helped me, including because I paid for half of his wife's operation."

26/ Neither military nor civilian doctors would take him on as a patient back in Russia because his papers were not in order. He was still in danger of being sent back to Ukraine despite his medical condition, so he decided to desert and leave Russia with the help of activists.

27/ Daniil says that any initial optimism about the war has long since evaporated on the front lines. "There were also some 'Rambo' types in Prudboy who said: 'Now we're going to go kill some blacks.' They meant foreign mercenaries."

28/ "But with each year of the war, such people either ran out or lost their enthusiasm – especially when active assault operations began in 2023."

29/ "There, all the Z-niks, vatniks, and patriots began to understand something – especially against the backdrop of the fact that payments were not being received. Everyone was already fed up with all this."

30/ Ivan Chuvilyaev of the 'Go to the Forest' activist group, which helped Daniil to escape, says that the Russian authorities are now cracking down hard on desertion, and behaving increasingly brutally towards would-be deserters.

31/ "In the spring of 2025, there were fewer deserters – this is due to the unspoken rule of not sending soldiers to hospitals on Russian territory, they are treated in the 'Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics'. And 90% of deserters leave through hospitals."

32/ "The rules are changing, the screws are tightening."

He says that as well as people being given harsher punishments for desertion, they also face increased levels of violent reprisals, though this is not reducing the numbers trying to desert:

33/ "There has also been a strong escalation of violence: there are many more pits, basements, beatings and rapes. I would say that, starting in January 2025, every second person [trying to desert] says that they have been through this." /end

Sources:
🔹 vot-tak.tv/87424827/dezer…
🔹 t.me/pgubarev/1325