“We can’t win”: Russian veterans speak out against the war | War Ukraine and Russia

“We, the veterans, are all talking and discussing what’s going on,” Nikolai Prokudin, a 61-year veteran of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, tells.The Moscow Times‘. “There are people with the same views as me, others are less radical… But most people are misled by the propaganda,” he says.

Last year, Prokudin launched a petition against an “escalation of the war” in Ukraine along with fellow veteran Sergei Gulyaev, who served as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan. And although many veterans who originally signed the petition have subsequently removed their names, Gulyaev’s name has remained.

“I don’t know if I will be mobilized,” he told The Moscow Times. “But I’m definitely not going to fight the Ukrainians. Better to go to jail.”

However, it is also risky for war veterans to spout criticism and they do not escape the dictatorship of the censorship laws. Several ex-servicemen have already been fined or even detained several times.

One of the reasons Gulyaev has such a strong opinion about the war in Ukraine is because a Soviet soldier from Ukraine saved his life in Afghanistan. That man’s son, a Ukrainian soldier, was killed in 2014 in a fight with Russian-backed separatists. Gulyaev learned of the tragedy during a 2016 reunion of Afghan war veterans held in Belarus. “My country has killed its son.”

Former military personnel interviewed by “The Moscow Times” have cited several reasons for opposing the war. Some think it’s an “unjust” attack on a smaller neighbor, while others fear the conflict will bring untold pain to Russia.

“I’ve seen all those destroyed houses in Grozny,” said Igor Knyazkov, a veteran of the Russian war in Chechnya and ex-police officer. In June, he was convicted of discrediting the armed forces for posting a photo with the slogan “No war” as a profile picture on the social networking site VKontakte.

All the war veterans interviewed agree that the ongoing corruption and incompetence of senior commanders will make battlefield success in Ukraine unlikely. “Neither Putin nor Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu served in the army for a day,” it said.

“Putin has single-handedly screwed up the country’s military mobilization resources and now this idiot has plunged into war with the whole world,” said war veteran Vitaly Votanovsky, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Russian Air Force. “He has created conditions where we cannot win.”

“The Ukrainians are my friends and comrades, so I am deeply outraged by what is happening,” explains ex-military Prokudin. “I would, of course, defend our country against Ukrainians, Belarusians, Turkmen and Kazakhs,” he adds. “But only if we are attacked.”

The ‘siloviki’ put Putin in a difficult dilemma

To what does the Ukrainian army owe its military successes? “It won’t last long at all” (+)