‘To die without blood on my hands’: 20-year-old conscript from Komi Republic commits suicide after refusing to go to war

Sergey Gridin, a Komi Republic native conscripted for mandatory term service in the Russian military, has committed suicide at an army base near Moscow. His family has confirmed this to Sirena and another independent news outlet. Gridin was 20 years old.

A Telegram channel covering mobilization writes that Gridin hanged himself on a water tower’s exterior ladder. His fellow conscripts found the body with a suicide note that asked for a criminal investigation of his command. (Deliberately driving a person towards suicide is a felony under the Russian law.)

The servicemen took a photo of the note. Members of Gridin’s family think they recognize his handwriting. The note itself has been confiscated by the command, and later disappeared from the official files.

In his note, Gridin wrote that his command was planning to send him on a rotation to Ukraine. After he asked to be left out of the tour, Gridin’s commander and the sergeants “tormented” him. “I don’t want to, and won’t describe what those animals did to me, but I cannot live with this,” wrote the young man, adding that he “made a decision to die here, in my home country, and without blood on my hands.”

Gridin’s sister told the media that her brother called after the New Year to say that he was being deployed to Ukraine. Later, he turned it into a joke.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said that mandatory term conscripts do not take part in combat in Ukraine.