“I fucking went to protect people and now they say I am nothing but a faggot!”

Oleg is a resident of one of the regions in Northwest Russia. He fought in Ukraine for several months and afterwards, returned home despite being told by his superiors that he could not leave. Oleg went to the front as a volunteer but was horrified by what he had to face. He told our journalist about the poor security, looting, lies from the command and huge sacrifices that had to be made. We also have evidence that wounded and sick Russian soldiers are regularly abandoned without medical care, some of whom have severe and very contagious diseases.

Editor’s note: The volunteer discussed in this text agreed to speak with the Barents Observer exclusively on the condition of anonymity. We cannot verify the truth of many of his statements but we reliably know that this man genuinely served in the Russian army and then left his unit contrary to the request of his commanders. In this article, we will simply call him Oleg. 

“If I had known, I would never have gone to such a shit hole

“It’s like a GULAG there. They don’t want to let anyone out except feet first. Every soldier knows about this and all of our relatives know about it too. Only the guys on top seem to not know anything. You watch the programs on TV. Everything is always clean and beautiful there… No, well, maybe this is true for the tanks. They come in, take two shots and then just fuck off and leave the rest of us to take the rap for everything that follows.

ADVERTISEMENT

Oleg is not a young man. When he was younger, he was declared unfit for military service for health reasons. This summer however, he decided to go to war with Ukraine in order to, according to him, personally see how things were at the front. Like all volunteers, he signed a contract and planned to spend three months in the war and, in his words, “if he liked it, he would stay longer”. He didn’t like it.

I was at the front from start to finish. There was a fuck-ton of losses. We were getting killed every day. Corpses were piling up on both sides. People were hitting tripwires left behind by both sides. There were no mining maps. Everyone was getting blown up. It didn’t matter whose mine it was. The “Wagners” would kill 150 people per day. No one knows this because it never ends up in the official reports! But they are hard core criminals.”  

Editor’s note: “Wagners” are mercenaries working for the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private military company who have been openly recruiting convicts from Russian prisons since the summer.

“We were getting killed by artillery, snipers and mines. Both sides were scattering “lepeski” (anti—personnel mines) all over the place. Everyone uses phosphorus ammunition. They spit on the rules of war. I prayed every day for everyone. There was nothing else to do. If you didn’t believe in God before, you became a believer fast. You ask yourself: How did I get here? And then, well, you start thinking only about how to survive. You can become a corpse at any second. The bullets never stop. Every soldier says that if they had known, they would never have come to such a shit hole.”

According to Oleg, Russian soldiers are not only suffering from the enemy but also from being poorly supplied.

There’s no fucking food. Everybody’s hungry and cold… They bring you buckwheat kasha, macaroni and rice but you need to go through artillery shelling to get to the well for water. And you’re not allowed to make a fire at the position because the Ukrainians will immediately fuck you up. How are you supposed to boil the kasha? They are mocking us. They gave us dry rations, 14 packets for 10 people. These rations are designed for a day but we had to stretch them for two weeks. 

We went through these fucked up villages. There is a root cellar in every house and we grabbed everything we could find. The jars were expired with rusty lids and half covered in mold… But we took it and ate it. What else could we do? We also went through abandoned beehives looking for honey. You’d get stung but at least you’d get a few handfuls of honey to eat. 

There were also homeless cows. The villages are all bombed. The locals either ran away or died. We shot a cow once to get some meat. Several others got blown up stepping on mines and we ate them too. 

Allegedly, we were supposed to get humanitarian aid. The authorities would swear left and right  that everything was coming but in fact not one motherfucking thing ever came. There were five pairs of socks for a hundred people, ten sets of mittens and a couple of hats. Obviously, everything is being stolen. At least, nothing reached my detail. I didn’t have a hat so I found one that used to belong to some Ukrainian and walked around in that. That’s how everyone has to do it there. I found some kind of torn sweater and put it on so I wouldn’t die from the frost. I had to constantly do push-ups and squats to try and stay warm. And what? You can’t light a fire, the uniforms are fucked and all I had were summer boots. 

If there was an opportunity to get something, we had to pay for it with our own money. I had several chances to go to the city and so I ended up buying everything myself, even this fucking uniform. And it was a lot of money. I also had to buy my own walkie-talkie to get through from position to position. The ones they gave us were complete shit and the batteries would run out in half a day.” 

“Have you ever seen a tractor? You’ll be a mechanic on an armored personnel carrier!”

According to Oleg, other soldiers agree that this is also the situation in other parts of the Russian army. 

“Some of my colleagues have children who are also serving but in other regions. They all say that everything is exactly the same with them. They were just thrown out onto the field without food or cigarettes or anything. They were told to start digging trenches but they didn’t give them anything to dig with… 

The whole front is like that there. Who would want to continue fighting? Everyone says that they never should have come. I could never have dreamed in my worst nightmare that everything would be so fucking brutal. There were people who had been in Chechnya during the war and even they said they had never seen anything so brutal. 

They told us we would have a change of clothes everyday and that there would be food. But there were always a lot of delays. They hand out promedol [an opioid analgesic] to the wounded for pain but the guys say that it doesn’t even fucking work. Everything is always overdue. What were we supposed to do?”

Many soldiers and their relatives have spoken out about the army’s lack of supplies. The Barents Observer has previously reported that there are literally hundreds of complaints on the Russian governors’ official web pages about the poor conditions for the mobilization and volunteers. They all say that they lack the most basic necessities from food to equipment. The authorities however have long refused to acknowledge the problem, claiming instead that all Russian fighting units “have all the necessary equipment.” Only one official, Dmitry Peskov, the presidential press secretary, has ever even mentioned that there were difficulties. He said this at the end of October but also added that these problems would be resolved soon. Despite these promises however, complaints continue to be posted.

Oleg describes the situation at the front as a big mess. 

“There are no qualified people. Guys without any experience are put on the equipment. They ask if you have ever seen a Belarus tractor and then they tell you you’ll be a mechanic on an armored transporter! All of the vehicles are old decommissioned garbage that barely drive. When we were evacuated, a tank crashed into us at full speed! It was one of our Russian tanks and guys were sitting on the armor. The crash smashed their legs and one guy had his head broken open. They were hamburger…

The artillery there is also incoherent. I would pass on information about the enemy’s location and it would travel through ten sets of hands before our people started shooting. But by that time, the targets were no longer there. With friends like these, who needs enemies? This whole fuck up is in the hands of the Ministry of Defense. They are playing some kind of bullshit game. I would love to believe in our president and Shoigu. They both speak so beautifully and their eyes are so sympathetic. But you can’t believe in them. It never works out as they say. 

The Ukrainians though really know how to shoot. They do a good job. They have been taught by professionals. We have to respect the Ukrainians. They fight well.”

“We are slowly dying here”

The Barents Observer has a letter from the wife of a soldier from one of the regions in Northwest Russia. In the letter, the woman asks the authorities of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) to help her husband, who is also a volunteer. He got pneumonia but was given no medical care. This was also true for 15 others from his unit. 

According to the letter, the men were left in a house in one of the settlements of the Kharkiv region. Soldiers had taken over the house and sent the previous occupants to find somewhere else to live. The men were in extremely serious conditions. Several were suffering from pneumonia and bronchitis, one had a very bad concussion, one guy had a fractured rib and another had an injured leg.

In the letter, the woman wrote:

The officers all left. But before they did, they made the men hand over their weapons and uniforms. They didn’t leave them anything to make the house livable and they were given no medical care. They had no medicines, no light and no gas. My husband told me that they were slowly dying there.”

According to available information, several volunteers had chronic diseases, such as asthma, vision problems or heart disease. Two men had hepatitis C, a transmissible infection that can be passed on by contact with the blood of a carrier. It is impossible to verify, but it is well known that the army really is sending people with hepatitis C into combat. 

Oleg also talked about them sending sick people to the front. 

“I should never have been allowed to serve. I have several chronic diseases and I’m too old. But they don’t check anybody’s health at all. My medical examination took five minutes and I was assigned… They put me in the highest fitness category. In fact, if they had properly checked, ninety percent of the men who served with me would never have passed.”

A volunteer with commitments

Oleg was a volunteer and signed a three month contract. When the contract expired, Oleg told his commander that he wanted to go home. In response however, he was accused of desertion.

“One day, they began to withdraw us from our positions. There were rumors that we were going to Kamenka [a military unit in the Leningrad region — Ed.]. There we would get debriefed and the contractors would be released. And by that time, the mobilization was already “officially” over. But our commanders told us we weren’t going anywhere and that we had to serve until the war was over. When we arrived on Russian territory, I told my commander again that I wanted to leave but he told me that if anybody left, they would all be declared deserters. Well, fuck it, we handed over our guns and left anyway. We hitchhiked to the nearest city, I bought some civilian clothes there and then I went home.”

Oleg is indignant about the whole situation.

My contract was over and there was no more mobilization. In the military enlistment office, they told me that I had the right to terminate the contract of my own free will. I never left my post. We had already been taken back to Russian territory. On what grounds could I be detained? I mean fuck, I went there to protect people and they made it like I was just a faggot!”

An activist from St. Petersburg’s Mothers of Soldiers movement, who also asked not to give her name because of the risk of persecution by the Russian state, explained there is no such thing as a “volunteer” in the Russian Armed Forces. In fact, the state deceives people by claiming that they can go to the front of their own free will and can leave it on their own as well.

“These men do not understand their status at all. They signed a contract, which technically makes them contractors. But now Putin has put a ban on closing contracts. These documents become perpetual or at least they are in force until Putin loses interest in continuing the slaughter. However, this does not necessarily mean that you have no choice but to give up and do what you are told. We have methods to help such people,” 

Oleg is now back in his hometown. He claims that he is not going to hide from the authorities. In his opinion, he has committed no crime nor has he done anything wrong or illegal. “I have fulfilled my obligations to the Armed Forces but they have not fulfilled their obligations to me.” Oleg is also upset by the fact that he was underpaid for his participation in the war with Ukraine.

This story was originally published in Russian. Translated to English by Adam Goodman