A military defector who fled Russia on foot has given a rare interview to the BBC, in which he paints a picture of an army suffering heavy losses and experiencing low morale.
Lieutenant Dmitry Mishov, a 26-year-old airman, handed himself into the Lithuanian authorities, seeking political asylum.
Dmitry said escaping from Russia in such dramatic fashion, with a small rucksack on his back, was his last resort.
He is among a small handful of known cases of serving military officers fleeing the country to avoid being sent to Ukraine to fight – and the only case of a serving airman that the BBC knows of.
Seeking a way out
Dmitry, an attack helicopter navigator, was based in the Pskov region, in north-western Russia. When the aircraft started to be prepared for combat, Dmitry sensed a real war was coming, not just drills.
He tried to leave the air force in January 2022 but his paperwork had not gone through by the time Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. He was sent to Belarus where he flew helicopters delivering military cargo.
Dmitry says he never went to Ukraine. We cannot verify this part of his story but his documents appear to be genuine and many of his statements match what we know from other sources.
In April 2022 he returned to his base in Russia where he hoped to continue his decommissioning. It was a lengthy process which was close to completion – but in September 2022 President Putin announced partial military mobilisation. He was told he would not be allowed to leave the army.
He knew that sooner or later he would be sent to Ukraine and started looking for ways to avoid it.
“I am a military officer, my duty is to protect my country from aggression. I don’t have to become an accomplice in a crime. No one explained to us why this war started, why we had to attack Ukrainians and destroy their cities?”
He describes the mood in the army as mixed. Some men support the war, he says, some are dead against it. Very few believe they are fighting to protect Russia from real danger. This has long been the official narrative – that Moscow was forced to resort to a “special military operation” to prevent an attack against Russia.
Overwhelming and common, according to Mishov, is unhappiness with low salaries.
He says experienced air force officers are still paid their pre-war contract salary of up to 90,000 roubles (£865, $1090). This is while new recruits are being tempted into the army with 204,000 roubles (£1960, $2465) as part of an official and publicly advertised campaign.
Dmitry says that while attitudes towards Ukraine may vary, no one in the army believes official reports about things going well at the front or about low casualties.