A 19-year-old Russian oppositioner joined the 155th Brigade to fight on the Russian side. He participated in battles, was wounded and told about crimes of his colleagues who are now shown on TV.

Now Georgy Filatov is 19 years old. When he was a child, his mother showed him a video of Alexey Navalny, and from then on, until the politician’s arrest and death in prison, the young man went to anti-corruption rallies. Now he is convinced that Russia is following the path of North Korea.

Filatov went to the war after breaking up with a girl and a failed scam with a rented video game console. At the front, he chose the call sign “Shteker”. Filatov told ASTRA about his first assault in the Kursk region, as well as death, corruption in the 155th brigade and extortion of money from the wounded for sending them for treatment.

When I was 10 years old, I asked my mother why our houses were so old, why everything around us was so ruined? That’s how I found out about Navalny. She herself went out to Bolotnaya Street, there is even a video.

After that, I watched all the videos of Navalny, and from the age of 12 I started going to rallies. We drove from Engels to Saratov with my cousin in his car. In those years, a lot of people came out — our Moskovskaya Street in Saratov was half full. 

We’ve been waiting since mornings for Navalny’s channels to tell us where to go. Our group — me, my brother, and two twin friends — gathered and shouted: “Putin-f*ggot”, “Freedom for victims of political repression” and “Blue underpants” — this is after the poisoning of Navalny.

When Navalny died, I stopped following the political life of Russia, I gave up. I started treating Russia like North Korea. I thought that after Navalny’s death there would be a huge protest, but as a result, nothing happened.

At the time, I thought my life was worthless. My friend at the age of 24 found a job: he made prosthetics and gained 20 thousand rubles a day. And I didn’t even study. I worked in a pharmacy warehouse and ate barbiturates [sedatives that can cause euphoria], wrote bits with a friend. I had a great girlfriend: beautiful, from a rich family, her father is the chief engineer in a shopping center, and her mother is a housewife with a chain of beauty salons. It was the first mutual love, we met in the app, I spent the last money on her, I came on a date with someone else’s latest iPhone, although I had an old Android. We dated for two months in the summer of 2024, and she left me with a text message at 4 a.m. and I fell into a depression. Then I decided that I don’t give a shit about everything, I’ll go, and if they catch me, I’ll go to war, I’ll die, and my mother will get the money.

By that time, my relationship with my mother was already complicated, because I was constantly looking for adventures. By the time I was 16, I already had a lot of police records. I stole clothes from stores and sold them for half the price tag. Because of my hooliganism, we often quarreled. My father is an alcoholic. When I was 5 years old, my parents separated. I went to see my father recently, but now he’s f*cked up — he’s deaf and drinks. Because of him, I have a bad attitude to alcohol, but drugs have taken root.

There was not much money in the family, as my mother had problems with the inheritance — she got the house, and she and her brother have been “dividing” it for 4 years. A lot of money was spent on lawyers, but the results were zero.

Once, one of my old friends suggested that I rent a Playstation console and pawn it in a pawnshop. And if the cops had caught it, we would have just bought it back. When the cops came, there was an incident — a friend became a witness in the case, and I was the accused. If I’d told a group of people about a crime, we’d both be in jail. The court gave me a suspended sentence, ordered me to pay 70,000 rubles and 200 hours of mandatory work.

I skipped work because I had already decided that I would sign a contract and go to war [in case of” malicious evasion”, compulsory labor is replaced by forced labor or imprisonment]. It was more for the purpose of suicide for money, they don’t give money for hanging, so I went to fight. It’s funny to me now, but then I explained it to myself, that I would go to death, and my mother would get the money. I knew I wouldn’t kill anyone unless I did it accidentally.

I signed the contract on November 13. I did it with the idea that no one needs me anymore. Although my mother said at the time: “Have you thought of me?” At that moment, my tears began to flow, and I realized that ” no, I didn’t think.” I, the fool, didn’t understand what a mother’s love was at all.

When I was traveling on a bus from Sevastopol to the Kursk region, I wrote my mother a farewell message about my whole life, including what she didn’t know. It was very difficult, I pressed my head to the glass at night so that the tears were not visible. She blamed herself for not following up, and I told her I’d made my own choice.

Three days later, I was already in the Crimea.

On the way to Sevastopol, the bus smelled of fumes. Before that, I was in Crimea only as a child, only when it was Ukraine.

At the military unit, five commanders met us and divided us into five brigades. I got into the well-known 155th brigade. We were told for 10 minutes that we are an “elite”, and therefore we will be sent to the Kursk region. In fact, this is because the Kursk region has a conveyor belt of people. And because of this, I am not a member of the “SMO”, but CTO [counterterrorism operation]. For “SMO” they promised a salary of 195,000 rubles, and I am paid 26,000 rubles, since this is military operation in Russia.

There was no patriotism in the training, all this f*cking stuff is only in civilian life. As a colleague told me, I quote: “We’re all going to die, but it’s going to be fun.” Everyone had the attitude that we were meat. Everyone understood that it would be f*cked up. And I thought that in the service it would be necessary to engage in patriotic pretense.

I spent about 25 days in training. In December, I got to the training ground in the Kursk region. We must pay tribute — we were lucky, we were trained very well and for a long time, a total of about two months.

On January 2, we were sent to Korenevo and thrown into the reserve, because, apparently, we were trained the most. A lot of soldiers were driven into battle, who in total trained for two weeks. Seven assault groups were formed. Then, in descending order, the groups began to be sent to the target under Kruglenkoe.

Combat task for 2 troops: capture a grove of two kilometers, in the middle of which is a ravine, oust the enemy’s strongpoints. We had to capture the extreme points of the grove and gain a foothold, then we had to change.

First, the prisoners went to the assault, then the paratroopers on APCs, then we,the Marines, rolled in. We watched the assault on the radio.

The first troop ended live — we could hear people dying. 
They didn’t communicate with words anymore, but with a pitched beep on the walkie-talkie [i.e., using the radio buttons], because, well, f*ck, apparently people didn’t have mouths. They were very badly wounded, and they were being chased. But we had to go there too. Only if there was a separation of the limb, you did not go to the assault.

A Ukrainian soldier with a heavy machine gun behind sandbags simply cut down assault group after assault group. They had a Mavic reconnaissance drone, working via Starlink, attached to the Baba Yaga [a common name for large agricultural drones used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine]. Accordingly, none of our electronic warfare systems worked. The Ukrainian behind the machine gun did not rest at all — he was constantly presented with ecquipment. That’s why our amphibious assault company ended.

This information came to us as a result of the deaths of six assault groups.

In the end, we were left with one more assault group, the last one. Before the target, we were given a chance to sleep off, we ate much, bandaged up, and were equipped. We spent the whole night packing tactical backpacks to the music, and left at 8 am. The guys are nice and funny — and everyone understood how f*cked up everything is in this war. At the briefing, the commander told us to gain a foothold at the point after the barbed wire and the corpses of the Koreans

We left on January 14. On the same day, a kamikaze drone crashed into us ten kilometers from the landing point. This place was considered safe, but our drunk driver forgot to turn on the electronic warfare system. The drone hit the anti-drone grid. I was standing in the middle of the [armored personnel carrier] MT-LB, I wasn’t harmed, only a small piece of shrapnel flew into my cheek. But it flew to our strongest fighters, grenade launcher and a machine gunner. One of them had a bloodshot eye and a broken arm, and the other also had a broken arm. And they’re all slightly concussed.

I wasn’t panicking at the time, but I was thinking, “What the fuck is this? Why did they prepare us so much, but we were hit by a kamikaze and no one knows what to do?” I’m not sure why I didn’t have a fight.

We slowly started crawling out, and our guy alone started shooting in fear at “00” [the evacuation site] — that is, not even in the right direction. There were only our guys there.

I delivered first aid to the driver of the car, it was clear that he was drunk. The MT-LB crew turned around and drove away. We spent the night in a hole for 4 people, it is safe and warm there. We ate half of what was in the backpacks, and we were told to move out in the morning. The next day, we reached the place where the “bird” fight began [hereinafter referred to as “birds” — APU drones].

We reached Kruglenkoye, and there there was nothing left of the houses. We met our platoon leader, call sign “Achilles”. He became a “500” [deserter] on another task — frostbite on his feet, survived and paid about 1 million rubles to get up as a platoon leader and not be touched. Usually we didn’t know where the commanders were sitting, as there were a lot of people who just wanted to go in and throw a grenade at them. And the platoon members were sitting there at the evacuation site: they were drinking energy drinks, eating well, they had Wi-Fi, a warm bomb shelter. Although in fact they did not differ from us in any way, they just paid money — they also have to storm, but they are sitting in the rear. Although the company ones are worse.

The platoon leader said that there was no evacuation group, it was all “300” [wounded]. There won’t be any food deliveries either, and we’ve already run out of water at that time.

On the second day, we left at 8 am, reached the point around 12 pm. The 120-mm mortar began to work. It was the first time in my life that I was introduced to this horror. I didn’t even know what the fuck it was that left holes the size of two of me, or what to do. My first decision was very stupid: there were ruins of a brick house nearby — just an open pit made of bricks — I climbed into the hole in a winter camouflage suit and froze for 10 minutes. The Ukrainians were constantly fucking around, and it came very close-2-3-5 meters away from me. Then I managed to hide in a nice basement. There was snow: we melted it, drank coffee, and slept. In the morning they moved out, and the shelling began again.

On the third day, there were only five of us left in the assault group. The rest went to the evacuation with injuries. We were told to move out due to the weather, but we couldn’t get out for a long time because of the mortars. It lasted three or four hours. They are not sorry for ammunition, they have a 10-fold advantage of mortars, and we have the 82nd mortar, God forbid.

At that moment, we were together with an old man under the call sign “Solovey”. He was a good man: from Sakhalin, a carpenter, in all cases rummaged. When we were on duty together at the TDP [temporary deployment point], we became friends, he told me about his family. He has a big family: two daughters, four granddaughters.

They came out of hiding with their grandfather. I took about 12 steps, and he took six. I heard a bird hovering over him. He turned and shouted menacingly: “Freeze.” Himself at this time jumped under a tree. I heard a click, “Solovey” jumped according to the instructions, but landed exactly on the grenade.

He was torn all the way to the pelvis, left with no legs, and his intestines came out. I realized this only later — when I came close to him.

I fell head over heels into the basement. I could hear him shouting as he kept repeating my call sign: “Shteker.”

Colleagues nearby said: “Fuck,”Solovey” — “300”, go f*cking help him.” And there was another bird hanging over him, waiting for them to come to his aid. I took two steps, realized that it was hanging over him, went back to the basement and explained to the commander: “It is waiting for me to approach him.” I was told to go and bind him up. Of course, I understand everything, I feel sorry for him, but I would now be 100% “200”.

Just for the sake of principle, I went, two steps at a time, which is very slow. And Solovey kept calling out my call sign. I went up to it, tried to touch it, heard the bird hovering. I stood where he was, then hid in the wood from under the broken doghouse. A bird hovered over me. And somehow it happened that the grenade from the drone detonated a meter away from me, in the next doghouse. Everything was in splinters, there was nothing left.

And Solovey was never saved — he bled to death under his screams. Now his granddaughter Anastasia Idzik is trying to find the body of her grandfather using DNA.

Injury and a week of evacuation

The same day we reached the grove. The radio said to be careful and watch our steps, because there are “light bulbs” [improvised mines] everywhere. And there you really walk through this grove and hear these “light bulbs” banging. There were a lot of people around without legs, they were crawling for evacuation. I asked one of them, “Dude, you need some help, maybe you need some bandages, you don’t look good, and how do you even crawl without a leg?”: “It’s all right, it’s all right.” I’ve seen five of them.

In the house in the grove, we crossed paths with dudes who have other combat tasks. We squatted down to talk so that we couldn’t see through the windows, because the FPV [drones] flew right into the houses. We were told that there was a basement nearby, there was a medic there, we could sit with him, smoke, drink tea. We went to him, and then to the final stage. There is a fucking forest, 1.2 kilometers and bald all over. In the middle is a lot of burnt-out equipment. The whole grove looked like sh*t. The birds were constantly high above it, and you didn’t hear the reset click. This means that we had to run across the grove on stealth.

As we ran, there were about 40 old corpses and dead cows lying around. We ran over the corpses, birds flew over us.

When we ran across, we saw that the burrows [shelters] were all packed. The first hole is “zero”, the evacuation should be from there. And there in the pit meat [seriously wounded] was lying around. We tried to go in, but they told us: “Get the f*ck out of here, there’s no room here.”

After this forest, I had a sincere desire to relax, at least just to drink water. There is a complete shortage of water there. And they told us on the radio: “You’re storming.” We threw off our backpacks, took machine guns, grenades, screwed in fuses, and on January 16 we slowly rolled closer to the point.

It was already dark. Closer to the Ukrainian positions, we all started to lose sh*t, and the 21-year-old guy generally lost his machine gun. I looked at him, fucking, with anger, thought: “F*ck you even here? Well, what is it?”

I went to the trenches of the Ukrainians in the first two. We were led by a bird, it was lucky that we chipped in on it in advance.

I went closer to the trenches and started throwing grenades at the burrows. I ran out of 6. Then I took the grenades away from the guy who f*cked up the machine gun. 

The commander of the assault group reported to us that, like, ” that’s it, we’ll finish it now, we’ll go f*ck wh*res.” At the same time, our commander of the assault group was quiet [became a deserter], did not want to do anything. Threw one grenade, and that’s it, he didn’t get a weapon, didn’t get up in a fighting position. he just melted. He always treated me badly. Hazing. For any joint, he gave me squats in a tactical backpack. It doesn’t matter after the training ground or before, anything could be considered a joint: I drank from the commander’s mug, forgot to put water in the backpack. He made me squat 150 times with a 45-kilogram BC [ammunition load], hit my legs with a f* * k, hit my helmet.

We were told: “Everyone, well done, get a foothold there.” And then a dark figure came out, I saw the fire from the flash suppressor, I heard a shot, and bang! A bullet, probably armor-piercing, flew through my front armor plate and hit me in the lung.

After I was wounded, I threw off everything I had — including my walkie-talkie and phone. I felt the spot — scalding blood was pouring out of it, apparently, the bullet was hot, or it just seemed so against the background of the cold. I took 15 steps, my vision went dark, and there were birds above me. And I thought that if there is a death, then that’s it. I fainted after 15 seconds.

How long it took me to recover is unclear.

By that time, I was told that the commander and the guy who went with me are both “200”. The commander, of course, is a f*ggot in terms of hazing, but you can’t wish such a fate on anyone. He has a huge family. Although already in the hospital I found out that the commander was in captivity — the military police showed me his photo.

It was already 7-8 o’clock in the evening. At that moment I didn’t care, I crawled, crawled, crawled, then started walking. It was painful to walk, but the shock helped. Spots were dancing in my eyes, I was short of breath, and I was terribly thirsty. I started crawling into the burrows, trying to explain to the guys that I just want to lie down and I’m leaking [losing blood], I need a bandage.

They kicked me out of the first hole with the words: “Get the fuck out of here, or we’ll start shooting.” It was packed, and four people were sitting there. I was also sent to the next hole.

I came to the dude from another brigade, he was alone, he had a place in the dugout. Only now dug in. He put a bandage on me, and I stayed there with puppy eyes. His partner kicked me out of the hole: “Go on “00”, we’ll tell you where it is, they’ll meet you there.”

On the way, I remembered that the burrow on “00” was the pot of our fallen. People were lying on top of each other, covered by ponchos [antidron blanket]. The smell is rotten.

I met a friend, who was rolling up after us — he was from the very last group, it was assembled “from shit and sticks”. There were people who were guilty. I stayed with them in the burrow for the night. I went to the command, he said: “Shteker, the country will not forget you.” In the morning, our burrows were dismantled by Ukrainian mortars.

We walked back for 6 days. Survived without communication and water (drank from puddles). We returned to the forest. It became even balder, there were even more corpses, and every night the Ukrainians threw 5-6 charges of cassettes.

There was no competence, no interesting assaults, no “f*cking Ukrainian corpses”. Corpses we do have, we just have the whole grove littered with our soldiers under icy jackets. There was no evacuation — you go out on foot and walk at least 4 kilometers under mines and drone drops.

We were evacuated on February 17. This was the last day of the evacuation. If I wasn’t on time, it would have been shitty.

They gave me two syringes of Nepofam because we didn’t have any painkillers. This is generally an anti-shock, useless thing, and it makes you sick. But at least you can sleep after it.

Task was fulfilled, but with what losses! I have the most survivors in the assault group: 5 people out of 8. All “300”, but one just had frostbite on his feet.

Extortion and corruption

On January 21, we were told that there would be no combat missions for the next six weeks — there are no people. We’ll get paid for the injuries, so we’ll have to chip in for ATVs and Mavics. We collected 5 million rubles from 7 people from all the assault groups, while all the others were already in hospitals.

Then they changed our commander. They put a 24-year-old Chechen commander with the rank of captain with the surname Akiev, call sign “Phoenix”.

“Phoenix” told us that the sooner we die, the sooner the combat mission will end and he will go on vacation. He boasted about his acquaintances from Akhmat and Grozny, saying that he could kill us, since he was smeared and didn’t give a fuck about anything.

“Phoenix” said we were deserters, f*cking up the task. Therefore, in order for the seven of us to be taken to the hospital, it was necessary to throw off another 5 million rubles. If you don’t chip in, you won’t go. We were all seriously injured: someone has crumbed bones, someone has frostbite of the 4th degree.

For another three days we were kept there with the expectation that we would get combat money, and this is 600 000 – 700 000 rubles. They asked if there was any money or not, and didn’t take us to the hospital. I screamed in pain last night, and two of my ribs are broken. Dudes have already chipped in 400,000 rubles, borrowed money to go to the hospital, but still 300,000 rubles are owed.

Then I asked my mother to give everything so that I could get out. The next day, she threw 60 thousand rubles to the commanders and wrote to the commander: “Is everything OK? Why is my son not being taken to the hospital?”

After 5 minutes, they came up to me, called me urgently to the dugout. I went in and the commander told me: “You f*ck, are you f*cking kidding me? I’m going to break your legs right now. Can I show you what your mom writes in chats? ” And my mom didn’t write anything special in chats, but she noted that her son was being shaken up for the hospital. 60 thousand rubles were returned back to my mother, but they said that I would go to be treated without leave and after treatment I would immediately go to the storm.

In the war, I earned 4 million, of which 3 million were received for being wounded. Everything else was taken. They have 50 birds, we have one. Why is that? Because when people discount, half of the money goes past the cash register.

For the first combat mission, instead of my issued bulletproof vest, I found a good bulletproof vest for 100,000 rubles. from the “200” [corpses] brought. I just took off the chevron of Wagner and went around in it, because the plates are good. But by that time I had already spent a lot of money on equipment, about 250 000-300 000 rubles on plates, pouches, and a new jacket. My jacket was set on fire by an instructor during training — he hit me with a tracer [incendiary projectile for fire correction] through a ricochet from the frozen ground.

If you want to hang a collimator sight on a weapon, buy it online. But they are children’s toys. If they see these Chinese collimators, they’re going to laugh.

We also bought gifts for our commanders. Another cool example of corruption: if a person “dies” during an exercise-that is, he runs too slowly or is blown up by a training grenade (potato) dropped from a drone-then everyone is thrown off to the wake. 56 people for 3000 rubles each. And the commanders set the table-they promise black and red caviar, but in reality everything is fake, with a maximum of 10 thousand rubles worth of food.

Most often, company commanders and lieutenants take money, although they are like colonels of the Guard in terms of property — once a car, twice a car, and they also talked about apartments in Moscow.

On January 25, I was admitted to the hospital in Krasnoznamensk, 4th branch. They already wanted to discharge me, but ordered me not to do so after questioning the military prosecutor about the Chechen commander Phoenix .

I myself saw that Phoenix after a combat mission bought a new Mitsubishi Pajero Sport. And the soldiers transferred money for the evacuation to him through a fighter with the call sign “Adventurer” — Phoenix is not stupid to collect bribes directly, so he asked for help.

The prosecutor after the conversation said that all the victims will be transferred to another team for security reasons. Before that, the guy who complained about Phoenix went missing. I don’t even know who to be more afraid of, our commanders or Ukrainians? In any case, you need to be afraid of commanders — they are enemies and animals.

On February 21, Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Fradkov came to our hospital. Together with him were journalists from the Zvezda TV channel. The medical staff was instructed to call all the hand-and-footed wounded for the cameras. Only amputation of the hand was allowed — they were put in the back row. Only 5 people from the floor were chosen, 80% of the hospital is amputated, mostly our legs are torn off. People without legs aren’t people, so why aren’t they shown on TV?

Everyone treats this war as a joke. People come here just for the money, and then regret it many times. Now I understand that my mother could not hug me alive in the hospital, but kiss me on the forehead in the coffin. If the body had been found. All this is disgusting.

Recorded by Daniil Bolshakov