A group of Russian soldiers have accused their commanders of jailing them in eastern Ukraine for refusing to take part in the war, in a rare public exposure of tensions inside the ranks of Russia’s army over the invasion.
“We already have a list of 70 Russian soldiers who were held as prisoners. In total, about 140 soldiers were held,” added Grebenyuk, who represented the soldiers.
In one written testimony sent to Russian prosecutors on 1 August and reviewed by the Guardian, a soldier described how, after refusing to return to the battlefield, he was jailed for more than a week in different cells in the Russian-controlled territory of Luhansk.
“As a result of what I believe were tactical and strategic mistakes made by my commanders … and their total disregard for human life … I made the decision not to continue in the military operation,” said Vladimir, a soldier whose name has been changed at his request.
Vladimir said he was detained on 19 July and placed in a room with window bars where he was held without food with 25 other soldiers from his unit who also refused to fight.
Shortly after, Vladimir said he was transferred to the town of Bryansk in Luhansk, where he was held in a former school, which had been turned into a military base with about 80 other soldiers from different units who had similarly refused to continue participating in the invasion.
He said they were guarded there by members of the private military firm Wagner, a notorious organisation that has been accused of committing human rights abuses while fighting alongside the Russian military in Ukraine.
“They [Wagner soldiers] told us that mines had been placed outside the military base and that whoever tried to flee would be considered an enemy and shot on the spot,” the soldier wrote.
Some Russian troops are refusing to return to fight in Ukraine because of their experiences on the front line at the start of the invasion, according to Russian human rights lawyers and activists.
“I don’t want to go [back to Ukraine] to kill and be killed,” says Sergey – not his real name – who spent five weeks fighting in Ukraine earlier this year.
He is now home in Russia, having taken legal advice to avoid being sent back to the front line. Sergey is just one of hundreds of Russian soldiers understood to have been seeking such advice.
Sergey says he is traumatised by his experience in Ukraine.
“I had thought that we were the Russian army, the most super-duper in the world,” says the young man bitterly. Instead they were expected to operate without even basic equipment, such as night vision devices, he says.
