Russia's war in Ukraine: how a conscientious objector escaped the frontline
The BBC Russian tells the story of the 27-year-old cabinetmaker from St. Petersburg, who refused to kill people in the war.
This is the story of Kirill Berezin, who was mobilised, got as far as the Ukraine border, slept on the ground, refused to carry a rifle, and fled back to St. Petersburg after a commander threatened him with violence. Investigation into his complaint means he can stay home for now and fight for his right to serve without arms. Will that right be upheld in the current circumstances is unclear.
On October 25th, conscript Kirill Berezin hailed a taxi by a shop in a frontline village near Belgorod, and arranged for the driver to take him to Petersburg.
“My goal wasn’t to evade military service. I was forced to leave the camp temporarily under difficult circumstances: I knew my request to transfer to the alternative civilian service wouldn’t be looked at, and I feared for my life due to the illegal actions of Lieutenant Colonel Smerdov.” This is Berezin’s statement from a report by the military investigator in Petersburg, where the conscript turned himself in.
The BBC Russian tells the story of the 27-year old cabinetmaker from Petersburg who refused to kill people in the war, and escaped from the Unit 02511 military camp by the village of Khokhlovo, near Belgorod in south-western Russia.
‘They shut the door and wouldn’t let me out’
On September 24th, Berezin found his call-up papers under his door. He didn’t sign the document as the law requires, but he wasn’t going to avoid the service either. He went to the recruitment office and asked to be sent into the ‘alternative civilian service,’ or the AGS (as it is abbreviated in Russian).
“You don’t need a gun in your hands to serve the motherland, and you don’t have to be in a special operation zone,” says Kirill Berezin.
Berezin had already served in the army. During his military service he’d fired a gun, but even then he couldn’t imagine using it to kill anyone.
“The gun is a bringer of destruction, you can’t create anything with it.”
He wanted to discuss this at the recruitment office. But nobody would listen. As soon as Kirill entered the building, he was met by the police, who locked the door behind him and wouldn’t let him out.
“Before I could open my mouth they took away my passport and military ID. And that was that.”
They put Kirill on a bus and sent him to a military unit in Kamenka, near Vyborg, returning the documents after the new recruits arrived to the unit. From the start there was talk of deaths and severe casualties like severed limbs. Positive side was discussed as well: the new arrivals were told how much money is promised to those who manage to destroy enemy equipment.
Unit 02511 in Kamenka is home to the 138th motorised rifle brigade. It used to have a sketchy reputation: suicides and runaway soldiers were reported.
In February 2022, the brigade was sent to fight in Ukraine. At the end of March it suffered heavy losses at the village of Malaya Rohan, near Kharkiv. Ukrainian news reported the destruction of their formation, publishing photographs of seized equipment and command documents. These are date-stamped, and suggest that Smerdov signed them on February 23rd 2022. A press release from the Ukrainian intelligence service also claimed that the brigade were using topographic maps of the Kharkiv region from 1969, which showed none of the residential buildings built later on.
In May, the prosecutor’s office of Ukraine named Sergei Maksimov, commander of the 138th brigade, as a suspect for ordering the shelling of residential areas and civilian facilities.
The Russian Ministry of Defence made no comment on this accusation. However, in June the news site ‘Sever Realii’ (designated as a foreign agent in Russia) reported that at the funeral service for one of the unit’s soldiers, an officer, Lieutenant Vladimir Chebotarev, said more than 300 troops were “cut off from their own men, surrounded and crushed.” This was also confirmed by relatives of dead, captured, and missing Russian soldiers.
In a comment posted on social media, the mother of one of the dead soldiers singled out chief of staff at the 138th brigade, Lt. Colonel Anatoly Smerdov as the one who’d sent his charges “into certain death, and then left them” in Malaya Rohan.
‘Everyone was scared’
Berezin hadn’t heard that story. But in Kamenka “everyone was scared.” Those with military experience didn’t change their day-to-day behaviour, and showed no emotions. Some of them had a lot of swagger. But there were people there who had never done military service, including those some who were unfit for service, and had been mobilised without a military examination.
On his fourth day in the unit, the recruits were taken to the firing range for the first time. Kirill was ordered to shoot thirty times “in the direction of the target”, which he couldn’t see without glasses. His glasses were later sent to him in a taxi from St Petersburg by his grandmother. (Kirill is an orphan and his grandmother is dependent on him.)
Kirill’s friend Marina Tsyganova was able to reach him before he was deployed on September 28th. She purchased some equipment herself and brought it to his unit – it was already clear that the new units were poorly supplied. She travelled to a railway station from where the conscripts were being sent to the south of Russia to bid Kirill good-bye.
“I looked at those ten carriages and I cried,” said Marina, “I knew there were at least 500 people there, and many would not return.” The train took three days to take the soldiers to Belgorod. Enroute, more carriages were added to the train, full of new conscripts from different towns.
How the conscripts were sent to the front
People from city aren’t used to sleeping on the ground in the middle of autumn. But on the first night when temperatures dropped to 10C there wasn’t enough space for Kirill in one of the large tents set up in the temporary camp in Khokhlovo, in Belgorod region. Still sleeping places were freeing up daily as other recruits were sent to the frontline.
On October 2nd, everyone was given weapons. Berezin was given an assault rifle when all new arrivals were standing in formation. He was taken just once to the training ground, where he fired at the target ten times.
“There was very little specific training for going further [to Ukraine] he explains. “One day of training, and some guys went straight to the front.”
Kirill was supposed to go to the frontline on October 5th. However, he refused to accept his rations of live ammunition, grenades and promedol [narcotic painkiller used to prevent the onset of pain shock in wounded soldiers] and requested a transfer to the alternative service, the AGS. His superiors forced him to declare his refusal to serve in front of the ranks, and told him: “Well then, hand over your rifle, bulletproof vest and helmet, because the guys are off to Ukraine and they haven’t got enough.”
Four of Kirill’s acquaintances in the camp had military experience. Amongst them was Petersburg lawyer, Andrei Nikiforov, who’d been in his carriage on the train to Belgorod. Nikiforov had been fighting in Chechnya as a conscript. On October 7th he was killed near Lisichansk, Ukraine – one of the first reported casualties from those who were mobilised. Nikiforov was at the frontline for no more than a couple of days.
‘You’re going, even if we have to handcuff you’
After Berezin handed over his weapons, he was sent to the chief of staff, Smerdov. At first he was threatened with prison. “They said I’d go down for 15 years. I said I’d leave that to the court, and it was a risk I was willing to take. And then Smerdov tried a different line of argument.”
The Lieutenant Colonel, in Kirill’s words “threatened to knock my teeth out. He held his fist right up against my face, and said that now he’d f*** me up. He said, why should normal lads get killed whilst you live, you f****** piece of carrion?” He recalled his conversations with Smerdov in his statement to the investigator.
Berezin took this seriously as a direct threat to his life, particularly as the Lieutenant Colonel was physically stronger than him. He also sometimes stank of alcohol.
“An intoxicated person with access to weapons, openly hostile towards a subordinate who has refused to bear arms – what a dangerous cocktail,” comments Nikifor Ivanov, Berezin’s lawyer.
Kirill says that officers at the headquarters witnessed his interaction with Smerdov. But those are unlikely to back up his accounts, he says. “He used to yell at his officers like they were conscripts.”
Whilst waiting for his transfer to the civilian service, Kirill went to the border town of Valuyki and bought himself a spare uniform – there was nowhere to wash the clothes they’d been issued with. Sometimes he and the other conscripts carried logs to build tents to house the new soldiers. There were others who stayed in the camp for longer; some men with bankruptcies could not be issued credit cards due to their insolvency, and had then refused to go to the front without receiving any pay.
Some soldiers were waiting for a referral to the medical commission. For some this came almost too late: one of the complainants – who’d been left without hormone therapy due to the mobilisation was recalled back to St. Petersburg being already at the frontline. Another man who had not done military service due to his eyesight was threatened: “You’re going, even if we have to handcuff you.” That person was sent to the front.
There were fewer and fewer people left in the camp, and Kirill caught the chief of staff’s eye more often. These sightings always came with threats or mockery – Smerdov would mimic him in answer to a greeting, said Kirill. “I realised that he was never going to stop.”
Smerdov’s constant threats, and his systematic humiliation of Kirill, were made public by Kirill’s lawyer on October 18th before the court in St Petersburg. Via the lawyer Berezin sought to prove that his mobilisation had been unlawful. When the court rejected his claim, Kirill fell into despair. Smartphones were not confiscated at the Khokhlovo camp, so he sent his friend Marina Tsyganova a farewell note, stressing they may never talk again. She calmed him down.
On October 20th, according to Berezin’s statement, Smerdov promised to send him into the combat zone. “I replied that whilst my complaint is under consideration, I couldn’t be sent anywhere. Smerdov said, in that case he’d hit me over the head with a butt of the rifle and shove my unconscious body in the back of a truck.”
On October 25th the conscripts were told that their units would be moving. As for when and to where, they didn’t know. “I didn’t want to head off into the unknown under the command of the man who threatened me, that would be dangerous,” says Berezin.
“Kirill phoned me,” recalls Marina, “He was extremely agitated, he said they were going into Ukrainian territory. He started having a panic attack. He shouted, “It’s all over, farewell! Just take care of my grandma, please don’t forget!” The signal cut out.
Escape from the camp
When Kirill called Marina back and said that all was well, she heard the noise of the road and thought that her friend had made his peace with being sent to Ukraine. The following morning there came a ring on the intercom. There was Kirill, standing by her front door in St Petersburg – he’d just got off from a taxi he’d spent almost a day in.
Fleeing the camp was not that difficult. Servicemen in Khokhlovo moved freely outside the unit – some would go binge drinking for days and return to few consequences.
“The whole thing was pretty chaotic. And because of this, the unit didn’t always immediately realise what was going on,” explains the lawyer.
After finishing on daily formation, Berezin left his uniform and rucksack in his tent, took his passport and military ID, and walked to the shop near which there were usually taxis. He found a driver, and asked if he could take him to Petersburg for 35,000 roubles. The driver figured out a route and said, “Oh, alright, get in.”
They didn’t speak much on the road, stopping only for petrol, food, and a two hour nap. After 22 hours, they arrived in Petersburg.
According to the criminal code of the Russian Federation, if a soldier ‘goes AWOL’ from his unit for no more than two days, he cannot face criminal charges. By the time Marina called Ivanov the lawyer there was just one day left. They went to the local Investigative Committee that same evening. By formally turning himself in, Kirill recorded the precise moment of his arrival. He made the deadline.
Marina had already been helping Kirill for eight years. They’d made contact by commenting on someone’s post on social media, and soon became friends. “When I learned he was an orphan, and his mother was my age, I wanted to show him some warmth.”
Three weeks ago, Marina posted a video on the channel of the Conscientious Objectors movement, in which she discussed Smerdov’s threats. This angered the officer even more, Kirill said.
Marina’s husband, Alexei (name changed) defends Berezin’s flight from the unit, though he believes those who fled the country to avoid mobilisation are traitors. “They should go harder on them, and tear up their [Russian] passports at the border,” he argues. Both he and Marina’s brother – whose three children are themselves reserve officers – are ready to fight in Ukraine if called upon. But if a man is not capable of fighting, he should be found another role, believes Alexei.
The couple say that there are no contradictions in their family. In Alexei’s social circle, people are more concerned about the lack of decent training than about how to avoid mobilisation. “We must fulfil our duty. If you have to sell your life [in the war] it become more valuable, and you’ve got to be prepared for that,” he says.
According to Alexei, Marina does not oppose the authorities, but draws attention to problems ‘to change the system from within.’ “We should all be like gears in a well oiled machine. We are protecting our children’s future,” Alexei is convinced.
Risk of forced return
In the report, the investigator claimed that Berezin had made his application as a ‘contract serviceman’. Berezin denies this in the same report. “I didn’t sign a contract. All the same, everyone told me that I, as a conscript, was on an equal footing with the contractors.” The investigator is of the same opinion – yet the two statuses are officially distinct, says Ivanov the lawyer.
In his statement, Berezin asked to bring Smerdov to justice under three articles of the Criminal Code – for threats of murder, abuse of power and exceeding authority.
The investigator finally decided to conduct checks on both Smerdov’s conduct and on Berezin’s ‘AWOL’ period. According to the latest version of article 337 of the Criminal Code, which came into force on September 24th, fleeing a military unit for more than two days during mobilisation or martial law can earn a soldier five years in a penal colony.
The committee did not send Kirill back to his unit, but he was seconded to a military unit on Vasilevskiy island, St Petersburg, while investigation proceeds.
At two in the morning, the military police came for Berezin and took him to the new unit. The runaway soldier was placed in a single room and sent to a medical commission, where he was given a leave of absence for the weekend and then sent home. The authorities from the Khokhlovo unit have not contacted Kirill since his escape.
Kirill’s laywer says he hopes to convince the court of something quite simple. “Berezin is not refusing the service. He is ready to be a cook, a clerk, a paramedic in military hospital. Anything but taking up arms to harm other people, let alone kill them”.
Read the full story in Russian here.
Published on 1st November 2022.
Translated by Pippa Crawford.