- The current Ukrainian military has stated that he is furious at the complicity of his Russian compatriots.
- Russia admits that external conditions have forever changed the country's economy.
 |
| A Ukrainian soldier walks past a shell in the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk in the Lugansk region. / EFE |
Volodymyr Grotskov is one of the Russian deserters who has decided to fight in the Ukrainian army out of conviction, risking heavy punishment or even death if he is captured. The military man has told his experience to the British newspaper Daily Mail.
The 48-year-old electrical engineer considers the Kremlin a destructive "cancer" that threatens the peace and security of the world and assures that, if he is caught by the Russian authorities, he would be executed, admitting that many compatriots would see him as a traitor.
However, he is also one of the dozens of Russians who are enraged at Vladimir Putin's government and have gone over to Kyiv, including prisoners of war and a senior official at one of Moscow's central financial institutions.
How did you make this decision?
The current Ukrainian military man has told the Daily Mail that his personal journey to take up arms against his native Russia began eleven years ago when pro-democracy protests erupted after electoral rigging and fraud. to fix the victory of Vladimir Putin's party in the parliamentary elections.
Grotskov says he joined small demonstrations in his hometown of Kandalaksha after discovering a video posted by Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption activist and main opponent of the Russian president who has since survived the poisoning and been jailed.
The video, based on documents obtained by Navalny, exposed how one of the people closest to Putin stole billions of pounds from a pipeline project, for which the military says he was surprised "by the scale of corruption and injustice" and it was his motivation to investigate the political and economic situation of the country. "I realized that we have to fight against this regime," he said.
The soldier left Russia after Putin illegally seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and later joined the Ukrainian volunteer forces despite living in the country illegally, where he ended up fighting one of the fiercest battles near Donetsk.
Grotskov, who was granted the right to remain in Ukraine last year, has expressed anger at his fellow Russians' complicity and their pride in fighting for Kyiv and against the regime.
"Personally I am not against Putin because if it is not Putin, there will be someone else. Russia, as it is today, should not exist," the military man told the Daily Mail.
The number of Russian deserters who are fighting like Grotskov alongside Ukrainian troops, risking execution or trial if captured, is unknown, but what is certain is that these people are widely recognized in Ukraine for their bravery and fortitude in the midst of the armed conflict that is about to complete four months, during which time at least 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died.