‘We really are fucking orcs’

How a Russian soldier decided to desert his post after fighting pro-Ukraine battalions in the Belgorod region

In October 2023, thirty-one-year-old Anton joined the Russian military in hopes of paying off his debts. Six months later, he deserted his post in Russia’s Belgorod region and fled to a European country, where he’s now seeking political asylum. Anton says his time in the army “shattered” his worldview and that he now views Russian soldiers as “orcs.” He relayed his experience to a journalist from the independent outlet Verstka. Meduza shares an abridged translation of his story.

On April 7, 2024, the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a unit of Russian nationalists fighting on the side of Ukraine, announced that the “hot phase” of its raid into Russia’s Belgorod region had come to an end. The group said that its goal had been to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and that it had succeeded in foiling the offensive that Moscow hoped would coincide with Vladimir Putin’s reelection and inauguration.

The RVC’s incursion into Russian territory had lasted almost four weeks. And on the day of the group’s announcement, a Russian contract soldier named Anton, who had spent the previous days in the Belgorod region repelling the RVC’s attacks, deserted his unit.

The previous fall, Anton had fought on the Kupyansk front for two months as part of a Storm Z unit (made up primarily of former inmates). He’d been assigned to the formation as punishment for his “big mouth” — during his training in the Kursk region, he’d frequently complained about the soldiers’ lack of decent equipment.

“It’s a fucking mess there,” he tells Verstka. “While we were being processed, when they took us to the clothing warehouse, all of the workers there were drunk out of their minds. The officers were 50/50, but the top brass were barely better than Yeltsin. All of the clothing was from the 1960s, and none of it fit. The extortion started right away: 500 ($5.80) rubles here, 500 rubles there. The parts for our equipment cost us 2,000–3,000 rubles ($23–$34).”

Anton managed to get his items — including boots four sizes too big and fatigues ten sizes too large — only by berating the warehouse workers. Ultimately, he replaced the gear at his own expense: resellers, he said, would come to the unit and sell everything the soldiers needed at “more or less market prices.” The soldiers also had to order their food from off base; in the second week of training, everybody got food poisoning from the unit’s rations.

From 600 troops to 40

Anton’s unit originally contained about 600 men, but after two months of carrying out assaults near Kupyansk, only about 40 were left. “I spent two months in that slaughterhouse,” he tells Verstka. “It’s just pure butchery. Only five or six men from each company would come back alive. In the end, they just mixed us in with convicts and made us push, push, push. How I survived is anybody’s guess. I was a grenadier, not a stormtrooper, so I didn’t go into the line of fire myself.”

Anton describes the unit’s approach to assaults as “push and pull.” In the “ideal” scenario, he explains, the assault occurs in several stages. First, artillery pounds the area. After that, infantry troops storm the enemy’s positions, followed by a group of reinforcements. Then, evacuation and resupply teams come in to carry out the wounded and dead and to deliver ammunition, water, and supplies. In reality, however, all of these groups usually mix together on the front line, with the infantry often scattering as they approach enemy positions.

“If you end up in an assault brigade, you’re fucked,” Anton says. “Nine times out of 10, these troops fall apart during their approach. The group advances about 200 meters, then comes under fire. This time, it was cluster munitions. There are no experienced people in these units; everybody scatters. If a person survives, they won’t go again — they go into panic and hysteria. Better to join a disciplinary battalion,” he says.

According to Anton, after his unit’s first assault, a lot of soldiers refused to take part in another one. Instead, they opted to be sent to Zaitseve, the occupied village in Ukraine’s Luhansk region where Russian military police hold draft dodgers and soldiers who have misbehaved in some way. Anton says many soldiers liked it there because they were housed in former barracks; others only described it as “hell” and “a nightmare.”

Meanwhile, Anton says, the unit’s commanders would conceal their losses by recording servicemen who didn’t return from the front as “500s” — code for soldiers who have fled or refused to fight.

“Our losses were just insane; I lost count. For three kilometers [less than two miles] — which we ultimately lost back to the Ukrainians — we lost five or six companies. The Ukrainian National Guard just came in and finished off the wounded, then they went over everything with tanks. The method for counting our losses was also interesting. If a person was missing for two or three weeks, then realistically we know he was probably torn apart or buried. But [the regiment command] would list these people as 500s. […] They didn’t want unnecessary attention for incurring high losses,” he explained.

The raid

On November 27, Anton’s unit’s assignment officially ended; there was hardly anybody left to carry it out. A new contingent was brought to take over the soldiers’ positions, and the survivors from Anton’s unit were sent near the village of Novochervone. The infantry was sometimes sent to carry out assaults, but the rest of the unit resumed “regular army drills” in anticipation of a new combat mission after New Year.

One night in December, however, Anton and his unit mates were loaded onto trucks and driven for 18 hours to a decommissioned army training area in the Belgorod region. There, among other things, they were tasked with helping border guards repel intermittent fire from across the border.

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In March, after several months at the training area, Anton and his unit were moved to a forest near the village of Shebekino, where they found themselves in a bunker with a group of signalmen. A rumor began to spread that the men might soon be sent on another combat mission. At about 7:00 p.m., the soldiers were loaded onto vehicles and driven all night to an unknown location; according to Anton, not even the commanders knew what their destination was.

Early on March 14, the soldiers arrived in the village of Mokraya Orlovka in the Belgorod region, where they soon came under mortar fire. During the attack, one of Anton’s unit mates had his head blown off; to this day, it’s unclear whether he was hit by a mine or by a piece of asphalt launched by one of the explosions. The men had no idea that the Russian Volunteer Corps, the Freedom of Russia Legion, and the Siberian Battalion — three pro-Ukraine paramilitary groups made up of Russian citizens — had already been carrying out a raid on the Belgorod region for nearly three days.

“We had no clue what to do or where we were,” Anton says. “Our command told us nothing. Naturally, when our convoy was struck, we scattered in all directions. Civilians were fleeing the village, and we tried to take cover. My group ducked into some 90-year-old grandma’s summer kitchen. She didn’t even blink.”

The soldiers’ superiors didn’t contact them until about 10:00 a.m., when they ordered the men to move towards a school in Mokraya Orlovka. After settling into an unfinished bathhouse, the men spent their first day there resting and trying to lay low. According to Anton, they were targeted with mortar and tank fire, while drones circled overhead. They had almost no communication with the outside world.

‘We’ll escape somewhere’

While pro-Ukrainian forces continued their raid of Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions, Anton and his fellow unit mates sat at their camp and boiled water for tea.

“We heard our comrades’ conversations [over the radio], but we couldn’t respond. There was a breakthrough in their area. It wasn’t just the assault unit that was there, there were also the surviving border guards. In the meantime, we learned that an entire platoon had been wiped out. Four guys killed. We were sent there to evacuate [the dead and wounded]. Another guy, who’d been injured, died in the hospital later. I carried him myself. About a week later, they brought in two 500s who had slipped away amidst all the chaos,” Anton says.

After the evacuation, Anton and the other evacuation group members left their weapons and armor and walked the five kilometers (three miles) back to the school. After sleeping and buying some coffee and cigarettes, the men went back to the battlefield to get their weapons. Anton had marked the location of his grenade launcher on a map with a star.

“If you lose your grenade launcher, they’ll move you to the infantry, and the infantry means certain death,” he tells Verstka:

There are plenty of rifles and machine guns, but getting anything heavier is a tall order. The commander once spoke candidly about this: “I don’t care about you guys — they’ll send me as many of you as I need. But if we lose equipment, they’ll come down hard, and there’ll be a ton of paperwork.” And this is consistent with everything else out there; in the assault units, casualty rates reach 90 percent.

After the raid, Anton’s commander went on a drinking binge along with his entire staff. Meanwhile, he says, the commander beat the newly arrived radio operator with anything he could find, blaming him for the communication problems the unit had experienced during the raid. A few days later, the signalman deserted the unit. By that point, Anton was considering doing the same.

Fleeing Russia

In late March, Anton watched a segment from the independent news outlet TV Rain on his phone. In the broadcast, he learned about Get Lost, an organization that helps Russian soldiers desert the army. Though he was initially skeptical, Anton ultimately decided to give it a shot after realizing he might not get a second chance; he’d already begun to hear rumors about a new offensive on Vovchansk.

“I first started having panicked thoughts about fleeing during the Kupyansk offensive. I’d imagined it completely differently. It’s my fault. Over time, I realized it’s impossible to survive these meat grinders. Assault units are used to plug all of the holes on the front; airborne troops and marines refuse to work there,” he says.

Anton first tried asking his command for three days off, but they denied his request. They also refused to grant his vacation time; according to him, even draftees who were mobilized in September 2022 are routinely denied leave. Finally, he managed to get permission to leave his post until the morning. That evening, Anton left his unit’s camp and went to Belgorod, where he collected his passport and other documents from a third party who’d agreed to help him. He then rented a hotel room and changed into civilian clothes. After that, he got a taxi and went to meet another person who’d agreed to bring him some cash. From there, he went to Smolensk, where he rented an apartment and purchased a train ticket to Minsk for the following day.

On April 8, however, a railroad bridge in Smolensk collapsed, nearly ruining Anton’s escape. He sold his ticket and found a taxi driver who agreed to drive him over the Belarusian border. After arriving in Minsk, Anton purchased a plane ticket to Yerevan; from there, he flew to an E.U. country.

“Almost everyone who’s been on the front line thinks about escaping. If you’re very cautious, fleeing the army is entirely doable. Get away from your field camp, ditch your uniform, and change into civilian clothes. The most important thing is to have some kind of ID other than your military documents,” Anton says.

According to Get Lost representative Ivan Chuvilyaev, Anton’s escape went almost as smoothly as it could have. The main complication was the fact that he’d signed a military contract, which made him “one of Putin’s serfs,” Chuvilyaev says. He explains how successful desertions like Anton’s usually go:

The journey through Russia couldn’t be easier; there’s nothing especially interesting during that part. Regardless of what region you’re coming from, you avoid going by train. Deserters typically use [the ride-hailing app] BlaBlaCar or hitchhike. [Anton] needed to be as quiet and surreptitious as possible, find inconspicuous clothing, not buy tickets using his passport, and certainly avoid using the bank card he’d been issued by the Defense Ministry. He followed all the rules, and everything worked out.

‘It shattered my outlook’

Verstka’s correspondent meets Anton in a cafe in a European city on a spring evening. He’s 31, but he looks much older. He drinks three Americanos in a row, chain-smoking Winston Red cigarettes all the while. Anton says he suffered 20 concussions during his time in the army before he stopped keeping track.

A month and a half after his escape, he’s finding it difficult to adapt to civilian life. The first time he went into a proper restroom, he says, he had trouble remembering how to flush the toilet. Sometimes he experiences bursts of aggression, panic attacks, and “adrenaline surges,” but he does his best to suppress them. He hasn’t drunk alcohol since before his deployment, and he’s always been indifferent to drugs; his experience on the front didn’t change that. His attitude towards the war in Ukraine, however, has changed drastically.

“One time, our command got drunk and let slip: ‘We’re fucking orcs!’ And we really are fucking orcs. It’s disappointing. The command generally doesn’t acknowledge it, and these moments of candor usually happen when they’re drinking. My time in the army shattered my outlook on life. I no longer have any positive feelings about Russian statehood. This isn’t war; it’s just agony. The only parallel I can think of is the First World War. They just send you to be slaughtered,” Anton says.

Anton initially joined the military to pay off his debts, which add up to nearly a million rubles ($11,500). It was the court bailiffs who convinced him to do it, he tells Verstka. He says the conditions of their offer seemed good, and when he signed his contract, all of the enforcement proceedings against him were immediately suspended.

Anton plans to stay in Europe and apply for political asylum. He believes he deserves it as a “person who refused to participate in war crimes.” He never fully repaid his loans and does not plan to.

Original story by Verstka. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale