Artyom Filin, a 35-year-old resident of the Moscow region, has been registered at a neuropsychiatric dispensary since 2016. Since 2018, the man has had a pinched trigeminal nerve in the cervical region, which causes him to experience constant facial pain, he also had a traumatic brain injury, and his official diagnosis is “non-psychotic disorder due to mixed diseases.” In addition, as his mother Elena said, her son does not always behave adequately.
“They’re taking everyone into the army, to be honest. While he was on his own, I saw a lot of things,” says the serviceman’s mother, Elena.
In September 2018, Filin was sentenced to 10 years under Part 3 of Article 30 of Article 228.1 of Part 4 (attempted illegal sale of narcotic drugs, committed on a large scale). He served 7 years and in November 2024 signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, thereby being released from prison.
Filin served in military unit 12322 in an assault company, and was sent to the occupied part of the Luhansk region of Ukraine. At the training ground, he tore his knee meniscus and walked with a stick, despite this, he was sent on a combat mission, which he could not complete due to injury, Filin’s comrades returned him to the base. However, the officers tied the man to a birch tree as punishment, and then threw him into a pit for two days.
One counterintelligence agent from the Moscow region helped to get Filin to the hospital in Severodonetsk for treatment, despite the ban of the commander of the military unit, D. Susedko (Call sign “Tobol”) — it was he who beat Filin for refusing to go on a combat mission with a torn meniscus.
Artyom and Elena wrote complaints about the commander of the unit, after which, as they assume, “the commander got a detention.”
Because of this, a criminal case was falsified against Filin about the loss of an AK-74 assault rifle, he claims. The documents signed by the senior investigator of the 132nd military investigation department, Medyannikov, say that Filin “is not registered with a psychiatrist,” and on December 13, 2024, during a combat mission near the village of Zhitlovka, “LPR” was injured and evacuated, but “left on the ground in the specified place the task entrusted to him. weapons service”, which resulted in “loss and infliction of property damage in the amount of 4,081 rubles to the state represented by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.”
However, Filin himself claims that he never received or even signed for this machine gun, and the protocol of his interrogation dated April 10, 2025 was forged by investigator Masmaliev G.E. The soldier said that during the interrogation he was threatened and tortured. But as a result, the case under Part 2 of Article 348 of the Criminal Code (loss of military property under special circumstances) was suspended.
Filin was transferred to military unit 11744. On July 29, 2025, the man received shrapnel wounds from a shell explosion. He was evacuated to the Burdenko Military Hospital in Moscow, where a certificate of injury was issued on August 1.
However, on August 4, Filin was transferred to the Voronovskoye Moscow Clinical Center, where he stayed until August 20, left the institution for one day on receipt for dental treatment, and on August 21 he was not allowed back. Filin claims that he was not treated there, his stomach was not sewn up, obliging him to return back to the Luhansk region.
But Filin refused to go to the location of the unit untreated, remained in Moscow. 8 days later, the man turned himself in to the 517th military investigative department, where he checked in and passed the military training course every week.
Despite this, in November 2025, a criminal case was opened against Filin under Part 5 of Article 337 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (unauthorized abandonment of a unit), indicating that from August 1, 2025, he did not appear at the location of his unit, that is, two days after he was injured. Filin has been wanted since June 2026.
Now the man is hiding, he is being sought by people in civilian and military uniforms “from Petrovka 38”, who regularly come to the house of his mother Elena.
