Seven contractors from a military unit in Buryatia, who wrote reports about their refusal to fight in Ukraine, spoke about threats from the command. The audio recording with their comments was given to Mediazone by Alexandra Garmazhapova, President of the Free Buryatia Foundation.
At the beginning of the recording, the military introduce themselves, give their names Ilya Kaminsky, Aldar Dylykov, Vladimir Malkov, Andrey Martynov, Sergey Arsenov, Viktor Durnykh and Nikolai Vasilyev — they all served in military unit No. 32364 in Buryatia, and after several months of the war they wrote reports refusing to participate in it.
“We all wrote reports, the command reacted negatively. That is, threats from the command began. <…> They threatened to report, they said that no one would get into the PPD (point of permanent deployment — MZ), the head of the military investigation department for the Dnepropetrovsk and Kherson regions came. They said that they created an assault detachment near Luhansk, and after SIZO-1 they send everyone there,” says one of the soldiers. =»mz-publish-context-cite_image» alt=»1″ />«He was sure he would come back.» Why do Russians volunteer and die in Ukraine
According to him, groups of 8 to 10 servicemen are taken to the military commandant's office, where they are kept locked in a garage with one-time meals for 3-4 days, and then sent to a pre-trial detention center near Lugansk, made on the basis of a rehabilitation center. The contractor also noted that the order to send the military to the pre-trial detention center was given by the deputy commander for military-political work, and the head of the military investigation department forced the refuseniks to write explanatory statements and statements about their readiness to fight further.
“We were forced to write explanatory notes that we do not refuse to carry out military operations. That is, no one accepted the report, no one signed it, they tore it, forced them to write various explanatory notes. The reports have not been considered to this day. A week and a half has already passed since the first report was submitted. There are no changes,” the refuseniks specified.
The mother of another contract soldier who served in Buryatia, and after four months in Ukraine wrote a report refusing to participate in hostilities, told Mediazona that her son Two shell shocks also prevent him from resigning, and today he was taken to the prosecutor's office. “I decided to lay down my arms and return home, but they don’t let me return home, they say:“ There is no such law, ”the source said.
According to her, they promised to give her son a vacation in May, but this did not happen. The contractor's mother added: “Well, it's the human factor that the guys are tired. I realized that they were not even taken out of the fighting — well, for two, three days of rest. I am not blaming anyone, of course, neither the commanders nor the government. This is such a situation … But, apparently, something went wrong. <…> And now they are keeping the guys, and they are not signing a report to Russia for them — here we are in some sort of limbo.
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Mediazona's interlocutor learned that 77 people who served in Buryatia wrote refusal reports. She suggested that the reason for this was that “there was not a single tank left in the brigade,” while the Ukrainian military had “rocket launchers, howitzers.” “The brigade was left to die,” explained the military’s mother. The mother of Ilya Kaminsky spoke about a similar situation.
Earlier, the Free Buryatia Foundation reported that about 150 contract soldiers who refused to fight returned to Russia from Ukraine. Garmazhapova clarified that they terminated contracts with the Ministry of Defense back in June, but after 15 women appealed to the head of the region, Alexei Tsydenov, who asked him to return their husbands to Buryatia, “the bus with the men who were already on their way home was turned around.”