An individual identified by CNN as a junior officer in the Russian military has apparently quit Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine and revealed details of his deployment into Ukraine — and eventual departure — to CNN.
“We were dirty and tired. People around us were dying. I didn’t want to feel like I was part of it, but I was a part of it,” the officer remarked. The individual faced pushback from his commander when attempting to resign but was eventually able to do so. “In the end, I gathered my strength and went to the commander to write a letter of resignation,” the officer said. “He told me there could be a criminal case. That rejection is betrayal. But I stood my ground. He gave me a sheet of paper and a pen.” It’s not immediately clear whether this individual still holds a position with the Russian military or resigned from that post in tandem with leaving the fighting in Ukraine. There have been repeated reports emerging in association with Putin’s war of soldiers on his side refusing to go along with the fighting. According to Ukraine, they’ve killed more than 29,000 Russian troops in nearly three months.
⚡️ Lithuania halts Russian gas, oil, electricity imports.
Lithuania became the first Baltic country to stop importing Russian energy products.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) May 22, 2022
According to the officer who spoke to CNN, he and men serving with him were made by leadership to surrender their mobile phones on February 22, a couple of days before the full-fledged invasion that sparked the current war. (CNN says “asked,” but handing over their phones presumably wasn’t a choice.) Subsequently, members of his battalion went to the Crimean peninsula, which is territory that Russia annexed in 2014, stealing it from Ukraine. According to the officer, there were refusals to fight right from the start: “Some guys refused outright. They wrote a report and left. I don’t know what happened to them. I stayed. I do not know why. The next day we went,” he said. The officer claims that lies about the proliferation of Nazi ideology in Ukraine — a deceptive smokescreen Putin has publicly used to try and justify the brutality — were not pushed to his group. “We were not hammered with some kind of ‘Ukrainian Nazis’ rhetoric. Many did not understand what this was all for and what we are doing here,” he explained.
⚡️ Police: Russian forces shell 12 cities, villages in Donetsk Oblast in past 24 hours.
The police said on May 22 that Russian attacks destroyed 58 civilian buildings, including schools, and left civilians killed and injured. The police didn’t disclose the number of casualties.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) May 22, 2022
Locals apparently repeatedly confronted the group with which the officer who resigned was fighting in Ukraine. “He almost climbed into the cabin where we were. His eyes were teary from crying. It made a strong impression on me,” he said of a man with a whip who confronted them at one point. “In general, when we saw the locals, we tensed up. Some of them hid weapons underneath their clothes, and when they got closer, they fired.” The officer ended up resigning after his group obtained a radio receiver by which they could hear news. “I felt guilty about this,” he said of spreading economic turmoil in Russia tied to the months-long war. “But I felt even more guilty because we came to Ukraine.” Read more at this link.
⚡️Ukraine, Poland to simplify border crossing.
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a bilateral agreement between Ukraine and Poland during Polish President Andrzej Duda’s visit to Kyiv on May 22, European Pravda reported. Zelensky didn’t provide details.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) May 22, 2022
