“We will kill you”

Artyom Filin, 35, from the Moscow region, was declared to have voluntarily left the unit on August 1, 2025, from the date when he was in the hospital after surgery with shrapnel wounds to his chest and abdomen.

Since 2018, Filin has been serving a drug distribution sentence, in November 2024 he signed a contract and turned out to be a grenade launcher assistant in the assault company of the 19th tank Regiment in the Kremennaya area in the “LPR”. In December, he blew himself up in a wooded area and, according to him, lay wounded for a week until he was taken away.

On April 1, 2025, Guram Masmaliev, a military investigator in Lugansk, opened a case against Filin for the loss of weapons (Part 2 of Article 348 of the Criminal Code). Filin says that the machine with the number that appears in the case was never given to him at all.

Filin was interrogated on April 9, without a lawyer. He claims that physical force was used against him during the interrogation. Lawyer Yuri Rudenko, whose signature is in the protocol (the document is available to ASTRA), did not meet with him at all, according to Filin. The protocol is dated April 10, and when Alexander Sidorov, the lawyer hired by Filin, showed the investigator that his client could not have been there on the 10th, Masmaliyev changed the “10” to “01” in the protocol.

On May 30, the case was suspended with the wording that the suspect could not participate in the investigation. Five months later, the deputy head of the same department, Nikolai Puchkovsky, confirmed in writing that Filin regularly attended the investigator’s calls. He was later sent back to the front.

On July 29, 2025, Filin received a shrapnel wound to his chest and abdomen, and underwent surgery to remove a fragment from his abdominal cavity. According to him, he was sent to the 442nd military hospital, then to a branch of the hospital named after him. Burdenko, then to the Voronovskoye medical center in Moscow. On August 20, he left on his own: his stomach was not sewn up, his facial pain was not treated.

Instead of treatment, he was promised discharge to a unit. The next day he returned — they did not accept him.

Filin could not get into any military hospital without a referral, went to a civilian hospital and confessed to the investigator himself. He was given a referral for a medical examination, and for six months he was registered at the Moscow commandant’s office.

This did not prevent the commander of military unit 11744 of the 11th Tank Brigade from retroactively declaring him to have voluntarily left the unit on August 1, that is, from the date when he was undergoing rehabilitation. In November, a second case was opened against him — on deserting. The confession, according to Filin, disappeared from the materials. The second case from Moscow was also transferred to Lugansk, where the first one was already being investigated.

Filin has not been paid a salary since August. He is afraid to go to the investigator again: from there, he believes, he will be transferred to Lugansk.

He is registered in Dzerzhinsky, near Moscow, and no longer lives there. According to him, after each of his complaints, unknown people come to the house — they introduce themselves as “employers from Petrovka 38,” they knock on the door with threats of “We will kill you.”

Filin also says that unknown people tell the mother that her son will be imprisoned for 25 years and that “if he gets to Ukraine, you will not see him again.” They came into the apartment without asking and intimidated the neighbor.