The forest ranges served the Russian as landmarks. Progress was marked by colors: yellow for areas where soldiers had been during the day, orange for fortified positions.
“First they lie that it is a controlled zone, and then they send units there. Ultimately, they lie to themselves,” explains Bojarinzev. The rest of his story – tragic for Russian soldiers — coincides with similar accounts of the pathology in Putin's army.
Vyacheslav Boyarinzev is the name given by the Russian opposition website Mediazona to the defector who is now talking about the conditions in Putin's army. He left Russia – he simply did not return to his unit after leave. He didn't even inform his parents about his plans. The young Russian wanted to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.
Boyarinzev is not a “war hero” in the sense of Russian propaganda. When he was drafted into the army, he did not want to “liberate” a neighboring country – he did not want to go to Ukraine. The driver from Krasnodar was lucky. He was first assigned to the honor guard in Volgograd. “I thought, great! This has nothing to do with the army as we know it [z materiałów z linii frontu]” – he recalls in an interview with the “Mediazona” portal.
Half a year later, Boyarinzev was already in a bunker in Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. It was one of the most hotspots on the front. The town eventually fell into the hands of the Russians.
However, the consequences of the negligence committed by Putin's soldiers turned out to be fatal for many of them. The cartographer talks about an incident from September 2024, when Russian units were sent to an area near Toretsk, which, according to the map, was under Russian control.
It was a fatal mistake. “It turned out that the armed forces of Ukraine were there – all the Russians died,” describes Boyarinzev, referring to the situation in which the wrong color (orange) marked the area not controlled by Putin's forces.
Russians during a military exercise (illustrative photo)Vladimir Aleksandrov/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Contributor / Getty Images
The Chief of the Russian General Staff received forged documents
The deserter also talks about the visit of Putin's friend and chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov to Avdiivka. He had to prepare new maps especially for him – according to the model of his superiors and with the alleged positions of the troops. However, in his opinion, the documents prepared were “complete nonsense”.
“It was impossible for the Russians to be in the area marked on the map,” recalls the cartographer.
Did the fact that Russian soldiers consequently died because of lies matter to anyone in the Russian leadership? Of course not.
Mediazona is an independent media portal critical of the Kremlin, founded in 2014 by Maria Aliokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot. Both experienced violence and abuse in Russian prisons. The portal set itself the task of conducting investigations into abuses in Russian prisons and police violence.
The editor-in-chief is journalist Sergei Smirnov, who fled into exile in Lithuania in 2022. The portal is classified in Russia as a “foreign agent” and is financed by donations.
Mediazona's reports on the situation in the Russian army coincide with publications by other opposition media, including: the renowned website The Insider (Onet's partner).
— The commander told us that we would all die, says Sergei, a Russian who tried to escape from the front several times in a conversation with journalists.
In other conversations, Russians describe how they escaped from Putin's army. One of the deserters tells about the escape of soldiers in… plastic body bags. A similar picture emerges from the conversations of Russian soldiers intercepted by Ukrainian services. The materials were published by Kyiv Post (also a Onet partner).
