A Russian paratrooper who fought in Ukraine has written a memoir detailing his time there. Pavel Filatiev described looting for food and receiving little guidance from commanders. “I can no longer watch all this happening and remain silent,” he wrote.
A Russian paratrooper whose memoir is the most detailed day-to-day account of the war in Ukraine has described chaos that included frightened commanders, desperate searches for food and contempt for President Vladimir Putin. Pavel Filatiev documented his experience of fighting in Ukraine in a 141-page memoir on the Russian social media platform VKontakte in August. The paratrooper was based in Crimea and served in the Russian army’s 56th Airborne Regiment. The Washington Post on Sunday published excerpts from the memoir translated into English. In some places, Filatiev describes incidents in which entire Russian soldiers are killed by friendly fire, the newspaper said. Towards the end of February, the 34-year-old wrote that he was preparing to go to war with no information about logistics and little understanding of why the war was being fought. He described one incident where explosions could be heard 10 to 20 kilometers away as soldiers woke up. Throughout the day, the regiment moved toward the Ukrainian city of Kherson, but their convoys got stuck in the mud. “The commander tried to cheer everyone up. We’re moving on, leaving the stuck equipment behind, he said, and everyone should be ready for battle. He said it with feigned courage, but I could see in his eyes that he was freaking out too. ,” he wrote. . Filatiev said it took him a while to realize that his homeland was not under attack and that the war was an unprovoked invasion. A day later, on February 25, Filatyev described Russian trucks that looked “kind of crazy.” Filatiev walked from car to car, asking people how they were and heard, “Damn, that’s over,” “We’ve been wrecked all night.” One of the soldiers of the 11th brigade told him that there were only 50 of them left. The story continues “The rest are probably dead,” he said. On March 1, the team advanced to Kherson, a major port in southern Ukraine, and soldiers searched buildings for food and water. “We ate everything like savages, everything there was, cereal, oatmeal, jam, honey, coffee… Nobody cared about anything, we were already on the edge,” he wrote. His account also described Russian troops being deliberately shot in the leg in order to be sent home from the war and receive a $50,000 payment from the government. Filatiev was evacuated in early April after suffering an eye injury. While he survived, he said the majority of people in the Russian forces are unhappy with Putin and the government. Read full excerpts, translated into English, at the Washington Post. Read the original article on Business Insider
