Time to read: 10 minutes(s)

NeMoskva spoke with the father of conscript Andrey Lazhiev from Karelia. Andrey, his only son, died under unknown circumstances. The deceased soldier's father described how young, untrained conscripts are offered contracts and how his son was sent to the border with the Kherson region after just two months of training. Andrey's parents learned that their son was in the hospital in serious condition from his fellow soldiers, not from the military unit's command. Before Andrey's death, doctors from the psychiatric department informed the parents of signs of repeated beatings on his body.

Since November 2, the parents of the deceased soldier have been unable to retrieve Andrei's body from the Rostov morgue. They are asking all concerned people to intervene and help them bury their only son. The deceased soldier's father wants to punish everyone responsible for his son's death.

Andrey Lazhiev from the city Piktyarant He joined the army immediately after graduating from college. His parents were proud of their son, who had acquired a civilian profession, and they were making plans for the future after his return from service. 

24 June (2023 – note: NotMoscow) he received a diploma, and 26 He was drafted. He wasn't hiding from the army, and I wasn't going to try to get him out of it. We have a law on compulsory military service in our country, and it must be followed. A man must serve in the army, but which one? — asks a question No Lazhiev - Andrey's father. 

Andrei was sent to serve in Budyonnovsk, in a motorized rifle Cossack brigade. Nikolai spoke with him frequently. It was difficult for Andrei at first, but later, according to his father, he adjusted, spoke well of his fellow soldiers, and considered the conditions normal. They even had a psychologist working with them in the unit.

August 30 Andrey called his father and said that they wanted to transfer him to Crimea to the 126th Motorized Rifle Brigade, and that their unit was being “given over” to mobilized and contract soldiers.

There was a guy there with him who signed a contract after two months of military service. I was surprised, because that's prohibited by law. He stayed there, and the other 50 conscripts, including my son, were redeployed to field camps in Crimea.,” says NeMoskva’s interlocutor. 

After this phone call, the young man did not get in touch until September 21His father became concerned and began searching for him through the military recruitment office, but received no help. He managed to contact his son through professors at Andrei's technical school, who were in touch with their former students. Andrei called his father and said they were in "field camps, in some foothill area." 

They had daily marksmanship training there. They were also lined up every day and told they "should sign a contract," and promised that if they behaved well, they would receive veteran's benefits. But what are veteran's benefits for, if they're conscripts? I told my son not to sign the contract, that he hadn't been trained yet. He said he understood what a contract was and wouldn't sign it. He said that when they were traveling to Crimea, they encountered a unit of guys returning from there (from combat zones – NeMoskva). He admitted that when he looked at these people, he felt scared.“, Nikolai recalls his son’s words, 

That same day, Andrei was admitted to the hospital complaining of weakness and vomiting. His father suspected he had been poisoned or that the difficulty acclimating a northerner to the south was to blame. The soldier remained in the hospital for three days, during which time he was scheduled to undergo a gastroscopy. 

The next telephone conversation between father and son took place October 6Andrey reported that command had informed them that their training had been completed and they were being transferred to the city of Armyansk, which is located near the Kherson region.

To put it bluntly, they were sent to a combat zone. It really struck a chord with me. I contacted a conscription specialist and asked why they were sending our children to a combat zone, since it was illegal. They told me it was Russian territory and they had a training ground there., says Andrey’s father. 

After this conversation, Andrei disappeared again for a long time. His parents were alarmed. On October 15, a colleague of his son's wrote to Nikolai on VKontakte and reported that October 8 Andrei is in the neurology department of the Naval Clinical Hospital in Sevastopol. He is blind, unable to walk, and constantly vomiting. He included a photo of Andrei with his story.

I was shocked and didn't recognize my son: he'd lost 40 kg in four months and was in a wheelchair. I managed to talk to him through a coworker's phone, and he confirmed the symptoms. Nikolai continues. “I started ringing the alarm bells, since the doctor on the phone also didn’t say anything definite about his diagnosis. October 18 I went to Petrozavodsk, to the military prosecutor's office, and wrote a statement regarding my son's presence in Sevastopol.. I don't understand why they even sent him to Crimea? What's the value of his knowledge if he only served for two months?

Through old army connections, Nikolai contacted a man at the Sevastopol military commissariat, who allowed him to communicate with his son. Over the phone, Andrei denied being beaten, though his father was certain otherwise. Furthermore, the soldier couldn't recall what happened to him after being transferred to Armyansk. He only mentioned the field, the trenches from which they were asked "not to stick their heads out," and where he lost consciousness. On October 8, he was brought to the hospital unconscious. 

"I was really scared for my son, and we decided to go there and pick him up. But we were told it was a closed unit and they wouldn't let us in," Nikolai recalls. “We contacted the military prosecutor’s office again, after which the military registration and enlistment office began to help us at least a little, although before that they had avoided me.

I found the hospital number and contacted the doctor on duty, who reported that our son had a depressive disorder. Two days after this conversation, he was transferred to the psychiatric ward. The doctor there reported traces of repeated beatings on Andrei's body and his general state of nervous exhaustion. On October 21st, he had an MRI of the head, but found no abnormalities. When I asked why he was vomiting and couldn't see, they didn't give me any definitive answers, only suggesting that he most likely had gastroenteritis.. 

October 26 Andrey's mother received a call from a neighbor in the hospital room, who said Andrey was in intensive care. Nikolai reached the intensive care unit, where he was told Andrey was on a ventilator in serious condition. He had previously suffered a brain hemorrhage, and his condition had "gone downhill." Nikolai and his wife decided to go see their son at all costs. However, the hospital assured them that Andrey was planned to be transferred to St. Petersburg or Moscow for further treatment, so the parents might not be able to reach their son in Sevastopol, which would take them three days to reach. 

But Nikolai and his wife decided to go anyway. They had to borrow money for the trip from friends and relatives. 

Our family isn't rich: I work at a thermal power plant, and my wife works in a wood processing plant. So we had to borrow money., Nikolai notes with bitterness. November 1 we left the city, to have just one. We were in Moscow. That's where we received the call about our son's death. I tried to find out the diagnosis, but the doctors refused to talk to me. I called our military registration and enlistment office, and they told me to go home because there was an ongoing investigation and they wouldn't let us into the hospital. 

Andrey Lazhiev died at the age of 19.

The parents have been unable to retrieve their son's body from the Rostov morgue since November 2. They are worried it will "hang there, as often happens, for months." They even cite adverse weather conditions as reasons for the delay.

They brought in the governor of Karelia and local deputies to resolve the issue, who promised to help. They also wrote letters to the military prosecutor's office and Putin. According to Nikolai, only after this did the military enlistment office "start to move a little."

After the incident, the deputy commander for educational affairs wrote to him on social media and said that he was collecting documents for his son in order to transport him.

I was surprised he was writing online instead of on the phone. Two days later, he finally called and said I'd need to come to the village of Perevalnoye, where Andrei served, wash him, dress him, buy a coffin, pay 25 rubles for funeral services, and figure out how to get the body home. I told our military commissar about this, he talked to him, and after that, we agreed to bring the body to Rostov. — says Nikolai. 

Only after their son's death did his parents find out which military unit he served in.

  The village of Perevalnoye, unit 12676 – I will remember it for the rest of my life,says the father of the deceased. — Usually, when guys are transferred somewhere, they contact their parents, but here they didn't tell us anything, so we didn't even know the unit number. But I think my son wasn't in the village of Perevalnoye; he was most likely outside it. The Budyonnovsk military prosecutor's office keeps sending letters saying they can't find Andrei's location or the unit he served in.

I show all this to the military commissar, and he clutches his head, saying it's the first time in his experience that someone has seemingly disappeared and no one can find them. Moreover, upon returning home from the cancelled trip, we discovered that our military commissariat hadn't been officially notified of the soldier's death, and the unit commander hadn't even heard of it.

Nikolai says the most important thing for him now is to bury his son's body, and then he'll figure out who killed him, why, and seek punishment. He admits that this is his only remaining goal in life. 

He was my only son. And these people, they killed not only my son, but also me and my wife, who aged about 10 years after this. We now feel like we've been buried alive. Before, we at least had some purpose in life; we lived for him. He was a completely kind, bright person— describes Andrey's father. "In his short life, he never drank a single glass of alcohol or smoked a single cigarette. The guy only read, worked on computers, and studied. He recently got his driver's license. He would have gotten a job, found a normal girl, and started a family.". 

Nikolai is confident that criminals in uniform must be punished. 

"I gave them a healthy, alive boy, and they're giving me back a corpse in a box, and they can't even give that back. And the scary thing is, no one has ever apologized to me for his death. Help these unfortunate parents bury their only son.", - asks Nikolai Lazhiev. 

All illustration materials were provided by Nikolai Lazhiev.