Refused to take up arms mobilized Petersburger Kirill Berezin escaped from the unit near Belgorod and wrote a confession. He told the BBC Russian Service about this.
According to Berezin, he left the location after the unit's chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Smerdov, said that he would hit him on the head with a machine gun butt and send him to war zone in an unconscious state. The Petersburger got to his hometown by taxi and wrote a confession to the military investigation department for the St. Petersburg garrison.
“I refuse to do everything that is listed in the oath.” A mobilized Petersburger does not take up arms even in a military unit
In his statement, Berezin asked to be prosecuted in cases of threatening to kill (Article 119 of the Criminal Code), abuse (Article 285 of the Criminal Code) and excess (Article 286 of the Criminal Code) ) powers of Lieutenant Colonel Smerdov. They also decided to check the mobilized person himself in the case of unauthorized leaving the place of service (Article 337 of the Criminal Code). During the investigation, Berezin was seconded to a military unit on Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg.
In mid-October, the court refused to transfer the mobilized to an alternative service. At the end of September, Berezin came to the district draft board on the agenda. He wanted to explain that he had a 69-year-old grandmother on his payroll, and also brought with him an application for alternative civilian service.
In the military registration and enlistment office, no one began to listen to the man: first he was sent to a training ground in the Leningrad Region and from there to a military camp near Belgorod. Berezin refused to follow the orders of the commanders and did not take up arms.