San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Russian soldier’s memoir portrays a senseless war
BERLIN — A Russian soldier’s searing firsthand account of the Ukraine invasion — depicting ordinary foot soldiers exploited as cannon fodder by inept commanders and a cynical Kremlin leadership — is drawing decidedly mixed reviews from inside and outside the battle zone.
For many outside observers, the ex-serviceman’s 141-page memoir, posted online in early August, offers a rare inside glimpse of Moscow’s brutal yet bungled attempt to subdue a smaller, less powerful neighbor.
But six months into a devastating war, some Ukrainians believe that widespread Western media attention to the veteran ex-paratrooper’s journal unfairly lionizes a willing tool of the Russian military machine, who should share in the accountability for wartime atrocities.
Moscow has maintained an icy public silence over the claims made by former soldier Pavel Filatyev, who managed to flee Russia earlier this month after self-publishing his story on VKontakte, a Russian-language platform similar to Facebook. The 34-year-old said he took part in Russia’s initial assault and spent two months in southern Ukraine before being shipped home with a severe eye infection stemming from dirt blasted into his face by a bombardment. He wrote the memoir during his recuperation.
Filatyev’s depiction of a haphazard and disorderly offensive, with many Russian troops unaware of their true objective even as they pushed their way into Ukrainian cities and towns, is in many respects consistent with appraisals issued by Western intelligence.
“Morale is poor in many parts” of Russia’s military, and its army is “significantly degraded,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Wednesday — Ukraine’s Independence Day, which coincides with the sixmonth mark of the invasion — in an intelligence assessment similar to other recent evaluations by the Pentagon and Western analysts.
But while the broad outlines of Moscow’s methods and tactics have become steadily apparent — as well as its missteps, most notably the early, failed attempt to seize the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv — Filatyev’s account offers an on-the-ground portrait that casts Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort in an even more damning light.
Some scenes are vividly drawn: After capturing the southern city of Kherson, the first major Ukrainian metropolis to fall to the Russian invaders, ravenous and ill-provisioned troops wolfed down whatever food stocks they could find, Filatyev wrote.
“Like savages, we ate everything there: oats, porridge, jam, honey, coffee,” he wrote, describing his comrades-in-arms as “exhausted and feral.”
For troops in the field, he wrote, there was “no hint of comfort, a shower or normal food.” Most equipment was ancient and malfunctioning, including the rusty rifle he was issued.
Whole Russian units were wiped out by friendly fire, he asserted, and soldiers frequently shot or otherwise deliberately injured themselves in a bid to be sent home. “We didn’t give a damn,” he wrote.
While Filatyev’s day-to-day anecdotes and descriptions of particular scenes could not be independently verified, his service record in the 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment — which took part in the capture of Kherson — was confirmed by news organizations including the Russian investigative consortium iStories, now based in Riga, Latvia, which published abridged excerpts.
Throughout the memoir titled “ZOV,” after the tactical symbol daubed on Russian vehicles - Filatyev depicted rock-bottom troop morale and commanders far out of their depth. Higher-ups, he said, had clearly decided to “flood Ukraine with our corpses.”
Although a disillusioned Filatyev denounced the war as morally wrong and declared he wanted no further part in it, some Ukrainians are infuriated by the memoir’s wealth of detail about privations endured by Russian forces rather than about the death and destruction they wrought in a country invaded without provocation.