Bereg cooperative of independent Russian journalists has interviewed three Russian contract soldiers who served in Ukraine. translated some of the rare interviews into Finnish.
The cooperative has changed the names of the soldiers featured in the story due to the sensitivity of the subject.
One soldier interviewed by Russian journalists has fought in Bahmut and later in the Kreminna area Andrei.
Andrei ended up at the front voluntarily from a Russian penal colony, where he was serving a sentence for car theft and other petty crimes.
He tells Bereg about a chilling experience from a couple of months ago.
Last August, Andrei’s unit was sent to the front line to evacuate a soldier wounded in a drone strike when the unit was spotted by Ukrainian reconnaissance drones.
The evacuation failed, and Andrei, fleeing the Ukrainian attack, saw the evacuee burning alive along with the fire pit.
Two weeks later, the Russians picked up the man’s burnt body. The death was reported to the troop commander. This ordered that the man be falsely declared missing in action.
At that time, Andrei says that he considered terminating his contract for the first time. It turned out to be impossible.
There is no going back
Andrei tells Bereg that he went blind in one eye and broke his collarbone in the battles of Bahmut. The injuries were not enough to be released from service.
According to Andrei, the poorly equipped Russian troops were forced to the front, often at gunpoint.
– You walk along an open field while Drones drop grenades on your neck. The boys lost their limbs. You can’t go back, because your own troops will shoot you, Andrei tells Beregi journalists.
Andrei says that he once spent more than a week in a cramped trench 30 meters away from the Ukrainian positions. During the week in question, the Russians did not advance a single meter.
– At the same time, the commanders sitting in their warm dugouts insulted us over the radio and called us cowards when we didn’t go on the offensive.
According to Andrei, some of the comrades in arms committed suicide.
– One hanged himself in a dugout, one shot himself in a trench and the third blew himself up with a grenade.
More than anything, Andrei says he was afraid of the Ukrainian Baba Jaga drones. According to him, the Ukrainians used the drones, named after the witch aka in Slavic mythology, at night because of their effective night vision cameras.
– They could still see in the dark who was sitting or breathing where. When you heard the drone approaching, you could only pray that it wouldn’t drop a grenade right into your trench.
Niskurts were abused daily
Andrei says that he started to lose sight in his other eye as well due to continuous concussions. He began refusing combat duties and resisting the orders of his commanders.
As a punishment, he was thrown into a deep pit dug with an excavator together with the other scoundrels. Some of them spent months with Andrei.
– We slept in damp terrain under the sky. Those soldiers who had their souls in store secretly brought bread, water and tobacco.
– If someone got sick, the doctor threw only one paracetamol tablet into the box and said: Why should I take care of you anymore? In any case, you will be taken to the front any day.
Soldiers who caused serious disorder were handcuffed to trees. Niskurs were abused daily.
When the higher military command arrived for a visit, the gunners were temporarily moved further away, so that the officers could not see the conditions in which the gunners were kept.
Escape from the front
When Andrei served for the fourth month in the Kreminna region, his arm was broken in several places.
Andrei was transported to the city of Astrakhan in Russia for hospital treatment. From there he returned home to his wife and children.
Andrei has been issued a wanted notice as a military deserter. He is not going to voluntarily return to the front anymore.
Sergei lost one of his legs
People also arrived from a Russian penal colony in Ukraine Sergei.
Sergei ended up fighting in the Kupyansk region in October 2023. Already a month later, he was seriously injured while trying to capture the village of Sin’kovka with his squad.
At first, Sergei’s commanders did not want to evacuate him.
– Why bring him out? Let him rot there by himself, commanders reportedly said.
However, after six days, Sergei was sent to the hospital, where one of his legs was amputated.
Soldiers are given empty promises
Despite the amputation, Sergei has not managed to terminate his contract with the Ministry of Defense.
From the hospital, he was transported to a military rehabilitation center in the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia.
He has spent 11 months there now. Sergei says that he saw how the facility works.
According to him, the soldiers are not even allowed to complete the planned treatment, but the wounded are sent back to the front to attack units.
The wounded are tricked into war
People who dare to complain about the situation end up at the front faster than others. According to Sergei, they have been abused and left without food and water.
– Some people have been beaten in the ribs with batons before being returned to the front, Sergei tells Bereg.
According to him, soldiers have also been returned to the war by fraudulent means.
– Almost everyone is offered a transfer to a fully equipped hospital in the Luhansk region of Ukraine. But there has never been a hospital there.
According to Sergei, it is a training center where soldiers are trained, assigned to new units and sent to the front.
– You can only get out of the war if you are missing two arms and legs, or a head, another contract soldier placed in a rehabilitation center tells Russian journalists.
Effects unclear
The journalist group Bereg says that it has acquired documents which, according to it, confirm a significant part of the stories of the interviewed soldiers. has not been able to verify the veracity of the soldiers’ accounts.
Ilmari Käihkön according to the assessment, their descriptions are believable.
– Those who refuse to fight are tortured, cripples are forced back to the front and medical care does not work. These are all things we have been hearing about for two years now, says docent of military sciences Käihkö.
According to Käihkö, it is impossible to say how widespread the phenomenon is. According to him, it is not possible to be completely sure what effect Russia’s actions will have on the fighting spirit of the troops.
Among the soldiers interviewed by Bereg, both Andrei and Sergei are former prisoners. According to Käihkö, this may have had a significant impact on their treatment.
– Different castes can be observed in the Russian army. For example, contract and professional soldiers are a bit higher than these mobilized ones, not to mention prisoners.
Kaihkö: Act with the approval of the Russians
According to Käihkö, there are several explanations for Russia’s brutal operating model.
– In the background are the pressures of war and Russia’s very consuming attack strategy, which requires a lot of material and crew.
Käihkö emphasizes that discipline belongs to every army, because the fear of death is great in humans.
– Discipline in Russia has been maintained by many people’s extreme methods, but they are clearly accepted by the Russian armed forces and society, because as far as we know, there has been no rebellion there.
Ukraine cannot use coercive means in the same way, Käihkö states.
– It is also a problem for the country. In statistics, the number of runaways has increased significantly in Ukraine this year.
In the case of Russia, one cannot speak of very skillful warfare, Käihkö states. However, it may not matter if it achieves the goals it has set.