‘Dig, Dig, Dig’: The Story of a Russian Soldier

The Russian soldier was captured just days after arriving on the frontline in eastern Ukraine. He had little education. But he knew how to disassemble and fire his rifle and where to place a tourniquet.

The soldier, who went by the call sign Merk, was lured into the hands of Ukrainian soldiers near Bakhmut last month when he heard cries for help from a comrade, he said.

With the permission of his Ukrainian captors, the 45-year-old Merk agreed to be interviewed by New York Times journalists just hours after his capture. During the interview, a Ukrainian soldier was sitting in the next room.

Over the course of an hour, the prisoner gave a rare account of the invasion of Ukraine from a Russian perspective, a point of view that rarely appears in Western news media and that the Kremlin seeks to define for the world in its attempt to sway public opinion. to influence.

We met Merk on a blood-stained floor in an otherwise neat and well-lit basement in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk. He was largely unharmed and his eyes were covered with tape and gauze. His hands were tied. The handcuffs were removed by his captor upon our arrival.

For journalists, interviewing each prisoner of war takes place under special circumstances, even with the prisoner’s consent. Throughout the process – from deciding whether to participate in the interview to what he might say during the interview – he is most likely weighing his captors’ reaction, or the prospect of physical violence or other distress.

The Times identifies Merk by his call sign to protect his identity for security reasons, including the possibility that he could be harmed if he is returned to the Russians in a prisoner exchange. The Times verified his identity through court documents and social media accounts.

The United Nations has found prisoner mistreatment – ​​including executions, beatings and torture – on both sides of the war, although Ukrainian accounts of Russian detention indicate much more widespread and severe abuse by the Kremlin’s forces at every level.

Merk was a prisoner turned soldier, he said, after joining the Russian army’s newly formed Storm Z prisoner unit after serving two months of a two-and-a-half-year sentence. He had previously spent several years in prison after accidentally killing someone while drunk, he said.

The interview below is summarized and annotated with an analysis of his comments by The New York Times. It takes into account the International Committee of the Red Cross accompaniment concerning the publication of information on prisoners of war.

Merk: “I have served the first term of five and a half years. Was released on parole. Then I didn’t show up at the check-ins. I was two and a half years behind again. full term.”

Before Merk was in prison, he worked in a machine factory and then worked briefly as a handyman before his second term in office. After two months in prison, a man in a “green suit” from the Russian Ministry of Defense arrived looking for recruits. Merk said more than half of his prison had already volunteered to fight with Wagner’s private mercenary group before returning to prison in March.

“They’ve come, the Defense Service. To ‘the colony’. They said, ‘Do you want a new life? Do you want to start with a blank sheet? Come on, there’s enough work for everyone.’ They said, ‘There’s enough work for everyone. You can build houses there.’”

Merk explained that he had interpreted the offer as a way to become an army construction worker. He said his only understanding of the war came from prison television. He said he did not realize early that he would be sent to battle.

“They didn’t say anything about that—that there would be shooting, war. We were told: ‘We will have to build Ukraine.’ That is it. They put us in a car and took us to the airport. In a police car. The plane was waiting for us. There were about eight cars with prisoners. They put us on the plane under escort. And we left. We were taken to the hangar. We signed the contract – when we read it, we already understood it.

Merk had unknowingly joined a Storm Z company, a Russian military unit filled with prisoners. It has been made in the image of in recent months Wagner’s prisoner programwhich was widely used in Eastern Ukraine.

He suspected that he had been recruited with about 300 other prisoners. He was not given any form of personal identification. But when he signed the six-month contract, with an option to extend, there was a photocopy of his passport so he could get a debit card and receive his salary. At the time of his arrest, Merk said, he had yet to be paid.

“I was a fool. Everyone went here, and why not me? I’m a man after all. I thought I’d serve my time. But I didn’t know where to go next. My sister wouldn’t let me in. I thought that if I went here I would at least build something At least I’ll make some money, buy me some kind of room I’ll survive I’d start a family, find one, at least I’d be with a family. Well I wanted a life I thought it would be a clean slate I’ll find a woman with a child, at least I’ll live.

Merk arrived in eastern Ukraine sometime in late May and was stationed in a training camp. There he learned how to use a rifle and received scant medical training. His commanders, too, were former prisoners and had simply acquired their rank through longevity, he suspected.

“We trained to dig trenches. I learned how to take apart and put back together an automatic rifle. How to evacuate with a stretcher. How to flip someone over so they don’t get hurt. They showed what to do if someone is shot in the neck and how to use a pain-relieving injection.”

When Merk was given a rifle, he knew he was going to be on the front line, unlike some of the other prisoners who had been sent to work in the base canteen.

“Then I understood everything. I’m on my way to death. They would point the finger, “You, you and you go dig.” They gathered us together, 25, 30 people at a time. They said you go to the shooting range to learn how to shoot. And instead of the shooting range, we were brought straight here. We each had two rations – and there was no water. Some soldiers died of starvation. They were just forced to dig, dig, dig, dig, and that was it. Day and night. We got an assignment. We were new; we had just entered. They told us, ‘You go in like meat.’”

Merk had spent only a few days digging and had no idea where he was on the frontline when he was captured. Ukrainian soldiers said he had surrendered near Bakhmut. The city, which was captured by the Russians in May, lies mostly on low ground.

“They brought us in at night. At night there are no bushes, only a clear sky. Almost in a field. Well, there are trees, ditches and greenery. We found a place, lay down to get through the night and started digging in the morning. The morning came – there were only corpses from before. Seem, only seem. It was after everyone was killed there. The trenches that were there were blown up. We had to dig new trenches. We were looking for a place to dig somewhere.”

Merk said that when the Ukrainian attack began, nine soldiers were digging next to him. Four were captured. He doesn’t know what happened to the others.

“We thought we were going to be sent to work, but they just sent us to die.”

Reporting contributed by Oleg Matsnev, Riley Mellen, Dmitry Khavin And Anatoly Kurmanaev.