“I was in shock” when the war started, “I didn’t understand what was happening,” remembers this dark-haired man with a determined look from Caen, in France.
Having left with his unit for “military exercises” in Crimea, a territory annexed by Russia in 2014, he says he crossed the demarcation line in a convoy and suddenly found himself “in another country”, without anything happening to him. has been explained previously. “The bosses told us that in ten days it would be over,” he remembers.
“Afraid of what I was doing”
The next six months passed like a nightmare for this former communications officer, who says he installed communications networks and other relay stations, sometimes on the front line, but without ever fighting. And to remember his “fears”. That of dying of course, but also “the fear of what (I was) doing”.
On leave in the summer of 2022, Alexander asked to leave the army… and understood that this would be impossible when, a few days later, on September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin decreed the mobilization of 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine. An announcement falling like a blade for all soldiers resistant to war, who then know they are deprived of any recourse to escape it.
Like Sergei (not his real name), 27 years old, a soldier in an infantry unit where he was in charge of IT and the training of soldiers. Mobilization means for him that he will be forced to go to Ukraine, “without any guarantee” that he will not fight, he recalls.
“I had knowledge in Ukraine and I understood perfectly what was happening there,” explains this frail man met in Paris. “I didn’t want to be involved. »
“Fired” by his boss to join the army
The partial mobilization proved even more brutal for Andreï Amonov. This construction worker in Yakutia, a poor region of Siberia, finds himself summoned by his boss, who after ten years of good and loyal service tells him that he is “fired” and that he must join the army. A hundred of his colleagues are subjected to the same blackmail, he says.
The next day, they were put on a plane, without telling them the destination, says Andreï Amonov, 32 years old. They finally landed in Buryatia, further south, and were taken to a training center, from where he managed to escape five days later, “through a window”.
Like Sergei and Alexander, Andrei Amonov fled to Kazakhstan, a journey of several days to one of the few countries – along with Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, the latter two states being closer to the Kremlin – where Russians can go with just their internal passport, the equivalent of an identity card.
Because Russian soldiers very rarely have a passport allowing them to leave the country: to obtain one, they must have the approval of their superiors and the intelligence services. This document is then generally confiscated, according to several NGOs.
“Hit, handcuffed and taken to the police station”
Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic neighboring Russia, is however not ideal for deserters, who fear being arrested there and then handed over to the Russian authorities.
On May 12, his birthday, Andreï Amonov found himself “hit, handcuffed and taken to the police station” by Kazakh police officers. But his lawyer allows him to avoid the worst. Sergei remembers the agents who came to question his neighbors, then a friend, about him.
The three deserters end up meeting through a local NGO, the Kazakh International Human Rights Bureau. They also meet a fourth companion in misfortune, Mikhail (not his real name), who arrived in Kazakhstan seven months after them.
An officer from the Moscow region, Mikhail recounts how he “exploited the weaknesses” of the Russian military bureaucracy, did not respond to his summons and dragged out the procedures launched against him for his refusal to go to Ukraine. To flee at the end of May 2023, a few days before his trial.
“Follow the French example”
“The day I arrived in Astana was the happiest day of my life. In Moscow, the level of danger had become colossal,” notes this athletic man with long hair.
Then France agreed to welcome them, after months of advocacy, and scrupulous verification of their stories by several NGOs, including Russia-Libertés. An “unprecedented” decision in Europe, according to the president of this organization Olga Prokopieva, who calls on Paris to “go further in welcoming Russian deserters” and other European countries to “follow the French example”.
According to the NGO Idite Lessom (Get Away), which helps them, some 500 Russian deserters are currently recorded in Kazakhstan and Armenia and thousands more are hiding in Russia.
From Caen, Paris, Metz (northeast)… the six men, finally safe, now dream of a peaceful, integrated life, but remain determined to make themselves heard. Together, they have been working for months on a project, “Proshaï oruzhie” (Farewell to Arms), in which soldiers speak anonymously about the war.
Russia “cannot win” against Ukraine with an army “which tries to plagiarize modernity, but whose methods date from the USSR”, quips Mikhail, who wishes to “transmit” his convictions to his “former colleagues » to “call them to desert”. “Perhaps, thanks to my example, someone will be inspired and want to leave the army,” believes Alexander, for his part, for whom “the weaker the army at the front, the fewer people there are, the more the war will end quickly and Ukraine will win.”
