'I Don't See Justice In This War, I Don't See Truth Here'

Former Russian paratrooper who was on Ukraine frontline exposes rot at core of the invasion

- Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer

‘Most people in the army are unhappy with their commanders and unhappy with Putin’

Exclusive interview

Pavel Filatyev knew the consequences of what he was saying. The ex-paratrooper understood that he was risking prison, that he would be called a traitor and shunned by his former comrades-in-arms. His mother had urged him to flee Russia while he still could. He said it anyway.

“I don’t see justice in this war. I don’t see truth here,” he said over a tucked-away cafe table in Moscow’s financial district. It was his first time sitting down in person with a journalist since returning from the war in Ukraine.

“I am not afraid to fight in war,” he said. “But I need to feel justice, to understand that what I’m doing is right. And I believe that this is all failing: not only because the government has stolen everything, but because we, Russians, don’t feel that what we are doing is right.”

Two weeks ago, Filatyev went on to his VKontakte social media page and published a 141page bombshell: a day-by-day description of how his paratrooper unit had been sent to mainland Ukraine from Crimea, entered Kherson and captured the port, dug in under heavy artillery fire for more than a month near Mykola iv, and then how he had been wounded and evacuated from the conflict with an eye infection.

By then, he had become convinced that he had to expose the rot at the core of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.