“I imagined that there, on the other side, there could be young people just like us. There was just a strip of woods between them and the Ukrainians. The worst was when he was out with young guys in his unit.

Where did the mortars he fired land? Had he killed children? The Professor said his commander instructed them not to kill civilians, but who was a civilian and who was a combatant? Even a kid could carry a grenade, he told his brother. It was his job to aim, but the Russian army’s coordinates were so sloppy that soldiers ended up killing each other.

I have an automatic rifle from 1986 or hell knows what year,” he told his brother in a January phone call. “They have night vision and automatic rifles with cool silencers. He was ill-equipped, at least compared to the well-camouflaged Wagner soldiers wandering around. The soldier said he was assured that he wouldn’t see combat and would get to go home every six months.Īfter a few weeks of training, the Professor was sent to the front line near Bakhmut as a mortarman.

Nicknamed “Crazy Professor” because of his disheveled hair, he was swept up in the first days of Russia’s September 2022 draft. When he finally got to go home, it came at a terrible price: his brother’s life. SOLDIER: ‘BONES, TEARS - ALL THE SAME, THEY ARE THE SAME AS WE ARE’ The Kremlin and Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment. “Just stop asking me these stupid questions.” “As long as we are needed here, we will carry out our task,” a soldier named Artyom told AP from eastern Ukraine at the end of May, where he’d been stationed for eight months without break. “That’s all.”īut there are other voices, too, of men who remain committed to the fight. “This is just a huge testing ground, where the whole world is testing their weapons, f- it, and sizing up their d-,” he went on.

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