2023-06-12 11:45:33
June 12, 2023
Caption,
Russian pilot Dmitry Mishov tried to leave the air force before the war against Ukraine.
Lieutenant Dmitry Mishov, a 26-year-old military pilot, fled Russia on foot through a forest and sought political asylum in Lithuania.
Mishov said escaping Russia carrying just a small backpack was his last resort in fleeing.
The lieutenant belongs to a small handful of known cases of servicemen who fled Russia to avoid being sent to Ukraine. He is the only serving airman the BBC has on record.
Mishov, an attack helicopter pilot, was based in the Pskov region of northwest Russia. As the air fleet began to be prepared for combat, the lieutenant sensed that a real war was coming, not just exercises.
He tried to leave the air force in January 2022, but had not cleared the paperwork to leave when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
He was sent to Belarus, where he flew helicopters to deliver military cargo.
Mishov claims that he never went to Ukraine. Although we cannot verify that part of the story, his documents appear genuine and many of his statements match what we were able to confirm from other sources.
In April 2022, he returned to his base in Russia, where he hoped to continue his retirement. It was a long process that was close to completion, but in September 2022 President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization.
They told him that he was not authorized to leave the army.
He knew that sooner or later he would be sent to Ukraine, and he began to look for ways around it.
“I am a military man, my duty is to protect my country from aggression. I do not have to become an accessory to a crime. Nobody explained to us why this war started, why we had to attack the Ukrainians and destroy their cities.”
He assures that the mood in the army is mixed. Some support the war, while others are totally against it. Very few believe they are fighting to protect Russia from real danger, she notes.
The official narrative holds that Moscow was forced to resort to a “special military operation” to prevent an attack on Russia.
The lieutenant said discontent over low wages is overwhelming and common.
He says seasoned air force officers are still being paid their pre-war contract salary of up to $1,090, while new recruits are lured into the military with salaries of $2,465, as part of a publicly announced official drive. .
Mishov noted that while the strategy towards Ukraine may vary, no one in the Russian military believes official reports of frontline victories or casualties.
Caption,
Dmitry Mishov’s identification documents prove his rank in the air force.
“No one in the military believes the authorities. They can see what is really happening. They are not civilians in front of the TV. The military does not believe the official reports because they are simply not true.”
dead companions
Mishov says that while in the early days of the war the Russian command did not acknowledge casualties or loss of military equipment, he personally knew some of those who had died.
Before the war, his unit had between 40 and 50 aircraft. In the first days after the start of the Russian invasion, six had been shot down and three destroyed on the ground.
Russian authorities rarely report military casualties. Last September, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia had lost around 6,000 men, a number that most analysts, including pro-Kremlin military bloggers, consider an underestimate.
In the latest installment of a research project identifying Russian soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine, the BBC’s Russian service has compiled a list of 25,000 names and, in many cases, ranks of soldiers and officers. The actual figures, including those missing in battle, may be much higher.
Mishov describes the losses among military aircrews as extremely high. This is in line with the findings of a BBC investigation that found Russia lost hundreds of highly-skilled military personnel, including pilots and technicians, whose training is time-consuming and expensive.
“Now they can replace the helicopters, but there are not enough pilots,” says Mishov. “If we compare this with the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, we know that the Soviet Union lost 333 helicopters. I think we have experienced the same losses in one year.”
The big escape
In January of this year, Lieutenant Mishov’s superiors said they were going to send him “on a mission.”
Realizing that this could only mean going to Ukraine, he attempted suicide. He expected to be discharged for health reasons, but that did not happen.
While recovering in hospital, he read an article about a 27-year-old former police officer from the Pskov region who had managed to escape to Latvia.
Mishov decided to follow his example.
“I was not refusing to serve in the army as such. I would serve my country if faced with a real threat. I was only refusing to be an accessory to a crime,” he told the BBC.
“If I had boarded that helicopter, I would have killed several dozen people, at least. I didn’t want to do that. The Ukrainians are not our enemies.”
The Russian lieutenant sought help on Telegram channels to trace a route through the forest on the border of the European Union. He packed as lightly as he could.
He says that walking through the forest was scary because he was afraid that the border guards would stop him.
“If they had arrested me, I could have gone to prison for a long time,” he says.
He says that at one point someone threw a pamphlet near him and then another. He panicked that they were border guards chasing him and he started to run.
“I couldn’t see where I was going, my thoughts were in disarray.” She came to a chain link fence and jumped over it. She soon knew that she had made it.
Caption,
After going through the forest, Mishov felt free.
“I was finally able to breathe freely.”
Lieutenant Mishov assumes that the Russian authorities will start a criminal case against him.
However, he believes that many of his fellow soldiers will understand his motivation.
Some had even advised him to try hiding in Russia, but he believes that even in such a vast country he would have been found to punish him for desertion.
You don’t know what will happen next. However, he maintains that he would rather try to build a new life in the European Union than hang around at home.
image copyrightGetty Images
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