Alexander is a Russian career officer, he is 25 years old, he graduated from the army academy as a military engineer. He entered Ukraine at dawn on February 24, 2024. He stayed there for six months., risking his life several times, later became a deserter. Like thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Russian defectors (estimated to be between ten thousand and thirty thousand) Sasha has fled to Kazakhstan – protected by the Point of No Return network of dissidents in exile – but does not feel safe: the Moscow government has issued an international arrest warrant for him. For this reason he agrees to speak to the «Corriere» only anonymously. But what he says is a window on the war crimes and crimes against humanity that the International Criminal Court in The Hague is investigating. It is a window, above all, on what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” observed while finding herself in the midst of it.
Sasha, how did your experience in Ukraine begin?
“I was sent to Crimea for military exercises. As a career officer I couldn’t refuse, although I tried.”
Did he realize immediately that there was an intention to unleash a total invasion?
«At first there were no obvious signs of an imminent war, but around February 18 or 20 I started to think that something serious was about to happen. Our unit received orders from above to prepare the vehicles for use in urban environments. It made no sense in an exercise, because usually you are on country roads, in open fields or in the forest. I worked in the communications unit and received all those signals on the encrypted radio channels. This is why I realized what was happening before many others.”
What did he think when he realized you were about to attack?
“I could not believe. I refused to believe it until February 24th. Until Vladimir Putin’s announcement on television. But I realized that we had more and more frequent visits from generals who checked the materials, the vehicles, the equipment. We all thought that maybe it wasn’t really an exercise, but at most we wanted to flex our muscles a little to Ukraine. That we would make a bit of a scene at the border and then it would all be over, like other times. We all thought so. I didn’t believe it until the invasion started.”
What happened when you entered the territory controlled by Ukraine?
“At 5 a.m. on February 24, they gave us fuel, weapons, and material, and we began to prepare, forming long lines. At about 10 a.m., we set out. When I crossed, the Ukrainian unit at the border had already been annihilated, and we passed in silence, without firing a single shot.”
Is it true that your army was disorganized and looted houses and shops?
«We drove 200 kilometers to Melitopol, the first big city on our way. We were completely disorganized. Nobody knew where we were going and what we had to do. The commanders were always on the phone trying to understand. They received orders as they went, there was no pre-established plan. We were like a large snake ten kilometers long of military vehicles, moving slowly. On the first day we traveled until late in the evening, but we didn’t even manage to reach Melitopol.”
When did he find himself in the first battle?
«The first skirmish was when we approached Melitopol. And chaos immediately ensued. Some fought, some fled into the woods in armored vehicles, some threw themselves into supermarkets to loot. We had the first precise instructions on what to do two hours after the first firefight. Before we were lost, no one knew what to do. They told us, again, to line up in long lines and change direction.”
What was he thinking at that moment?
«At first you don’t understand anything. You are in shock, you can’t realize that you are in a real war and you are taking part in that war. Before then the war in my head was something virtual, I couldn’t imagine a situation where I would find myself in it. But then when you’re there, you don’t know what to do. You don’t know if you have to fight or hide. You’re not used to it, you feel completely unprepared and uncertain.”
But how long had you been a career officer?
“At that time, seven or eight months. I had just graduated from military college.”
Have you witnessed atrocities and killings of civilians?
“I didn’t see with my own eyes when they were killed. But I saw the bodies thrown in the street and I heard the sound of the shots of the executions of civilians, yes.”
Can you tell us more?
«One day we were traveling along a country road and we saw a car coming in our direction, there were civilians inside. Three young people. The special forces stopped the car. They put them face down on the ground and stripped them to their bare torsos to check if they had any tattoos. They asked the command what they should do with it. From command they simply told us to kill them and burn the car. I heard the three shots behind me, because I had already moved forward; then I saw smoke rising from the burning car.”
It wasn’t just disorganization: was the army under specific orders to kill civilians?
«It was the fourth day of the invasion. At that point there was a little more organisation, everyone was asking for clear orders and we were all a little more used to war conditions. There was more structure.”
So was there a decision by the military commands to kill civilians?
“Yes”.
How long did this go on?
«It didn’t always happen. Maybe our commanders thought that the civilians were actually fighters in disguise. In any case I didn’t agree, I’ve never agreed.”
Did you witness other incidents that could constitute war crimes?
“Personally, no, I wasn’t an eyewitness. But I heard the stories. A fellow soldier once at the table, while we were all eating together, was drunk and told me that they had tortured some people in one of the nearby towns. Around the beginning of March, the Ukrainians had hit one of our command posts, many people had been killed. Our people were furious. They had gone to look for someone who would tip us off, give us the right coordinates. They gathered all the civilians in a room, started interrogating them one by one and checked their phones.”
How did they question them?
“With the use of force. They beat them. That drunken colleague told me that he had cut off the finger of one of the prisoners. He explained to me how he had done it. From that day on, I avoided sitting at the table with that man.”
Did you think the invasion was a good idea at the time, or did you already think something was wrong?
«I felt completely at odds from the beginning and I even spoke about it to some of my superiors. I was afraid that the invasion would produce negative consequences for Russia, as well as for Ukraine: perhaps a larger war or something very bad.”
And what did her superiors answer her?
“One of them told me: wait ten days and it will all be over. This story will not last, he told me. The next day he was dead.”
But was it really that easy to express doubts? Did she trust herself to freely share opinions with her comrades?
«I could talk about it with my closest friends, those in my inner circle. They all thought like me. I certainly didn’t talk about it with others, but it’s Russian culture not to talk about certain things except with people you know very well.”
Were you afraid during the war?
«Of course, at certain moments he thought it was over. If you are a normal person, you are afraid in war. If you don’t have any, you’re an idiot or someone who has never seen war and doesn’t know what it is. Or you have a huge amount of experience. And I didn’t fall into any of these cases.”
Did you often find yourself in battle?
“I didn’t fight directly, even though I was armed: I had to ensure telecommunications on the front line and go back. But sometimes I found myself under Ukrainian fire and in very difficult situations.”
Did the commanders send you on the attack, completely indifferent to your fate? Or did they somehow try to protect you?
“I have had experience of both situations. In one situation the commanders were very attentive to their troops, in other situations the officers threw people into a bloodbath just to achieve objectives indicated by the higher commands.”
Can you explain better?
«There were times when absolutely insane orders arrived to enter highly populated areas and hold them at all costs. There were no scruples about the end we soldiers would meet. I heard with my own ears the commander of my unit talking on the phone with his superiors, the generals. He told him: ‘I don’t take mine down there, it’s like going to commit suicide. I don’t send soldiers to be slaughtered.’ But sometimes they were pushed forward at all costs. It depended on the situations.”
For example?
«At the beginning we were going full force, no one counted. It’s not that they didn’t spare people, they didn’t spare anything: neither ammunition, nor materials, nor people. Then when the big losses started the commanders started treating the personnel with a little more attention.”
When did you start thinking about escaping?
“I was in Ukraine for six months and for six months I looked for a way out. Several times I tried to break my arm. When no one was looking, I put my arm on a concrete barricade and tried to break it with a stone. Luckily, after six months they gave me some days of leave and I was able to return to Russia.”
How did you get the idea to defect?
“I started thinking about it when I realized that there was no other way out. After several attempts to get discharged, I finally had two weeks off just before the mobilization in September 2022. At that point I realized that I had no other option than to become a deserter.”
So what was the plan?
“In my unit they made up my discharge papers, so I was able to visit my family and tell them what I had seen. I didn’t have a very clear plan. But right before the mobilization my direct superior called me and asked me to return to Ukraine early. I told him I wouldn’t do it. He insisted, saying that the mobilization was about to start. So I bought a plane ticket to Kazakhstan, because you can enter there from Russia even without a passport.”
And they allowed her to fly to Kazakhstan, despite being under arms?
“There is no common army database in Russia. I knew that I could disappear for two days before they started looking for me and reported my name at the border crossing terminals. I counted on a 95% chance that I would have no problems at the airport if I left within 48 hours.”
But if it’s so easy to desert, why don’t more people do it?
“It seems easy to defect once you’ve done it, but not before. It’s not easy morally, because if you leave the army, if you leave your comrades, you become a traitor. And for a soldier it’s hard. Your whole life, all your work has been based on the idea that you are there for your homeland and that you cannot betray it. And then from one day to the next you’re a pariah.”
How do you see your future? What is her plan?
«Now I am one of the deserters stuck in Kazakhstan. We don’t have passports, so we can’t get visas for other countries, even though we would all like to leave here because staying in Kazakhstan is not safe. Some of us were arrested. In one case one was arrested and handed over to Russia. Kazakhstan has an extradition agreement with Russia for people like me, but overall they leave us alone because the government tries to appear neutral. I am applying for humanitarian permits in France, Germany or the United States.”
How does he live?
«I try to get by as a rider or other odd jobs, always in the black. I asked for asylum here, but they denied it.”
This article appeared in the Corriere della Sera newsletter, Whatever it takes, edited by Federico Fubini. To register, click here.
