«My name is Ilya, and I am a deserter»
"The Pit," resetting, beatings, and torture with a stun gun. "NeMoskva" spoke with a man who defected from the Russian army.
In his previous life, 34-year-old Ilya Elokhin pursued exclusively peaceful pursuits: he graduated from a teacher training college in his hometown of Kungur (in the Perm region), worked as an elementary school teacher, and directed a dance ensemble. He was rejected for military service due to health issues: asthma, heart problems, and kidney problems.
Ilya received his first draft notice back in 2022. He showed them medical certificates and they left him alone. But after some time, the military registration and enlistment office called again. By this time, Ilya had already been on sick leave for four months: his asthma had worsened. But they told him he needed to come to Perm immediately for a medical examination.
The examination revealed what it was supposed to: Category B, limited fitness. But then the military registration and enlistment office started calling him, his wife, and his parents. Persuasion, mixed with threats, began. Finally, in the spring of 2024, Ilya packed his things and arrived at the selection center. An hour later, the recruits—about 10-15 of them—were loaded into a van and driven to Yekaterinburg, and from there, they were flown to Rostov.
"Why did you go then? You can't serve for health reasons..."
"Everyone was panicking, and my parents were afraid they'd be pressured. And I was at a loss; I didn't know what to do. Even though I already had a passport and was thinking about going abroad. But I figured they'd arrest me at the airport."
— How did you and your loved ones feel about the war at that time?
"I was against the war from the start, and so was my wife, and my mother. And my father... he's old-school. He said, 'Well, go ahead, you have to risk your life—you have to defend your homeland, after all...'"
Ilya claims the signature on the contract isn't his; he didn't sign it. And given his diagnosis—moderate asthma—the contract shouldn't have been signed at all, as stated in the complaint his wife filed with the military prosecutor's office. Nevertheless, Ilya, along with other contract soldiers, was sent to the "DPR," to the temporary unit "Somalia," and from there to military unit 71443.
At zero they reset
A year ago on Change.org a petition appeared called "The lawlessness of the command of military unit 71443", which has been signed by over 1,500 people to date. It addresses "late payment of wages, failure to provide medical care, extortion, cash withdrawals from the cards of the dead and missing, confiscation of civilian documents and personal belongings, sending the wounded and sick on combat missions, and other criminal acts (beatings, abuse, moral degradation of human dignity, imprisonment in pits as punishment followed by deprivation of water, food, and toilet facilities), as well as obstruction of the identification of the dead, independent DNA testing, and the receipt of orders and medals, as well as monthly cash payments for the dead."
Ilya was assigned to work at headquarters: filling out paperwork, taking photographs—both of the living and dead:
"When they brought in the first batch of dead, there were four people there. One, I understand, was burned in a tank—he was completely charred. I felt sick, I started shaking all over, I threw up. And I think that completely broke me: I became even more afraid. Because they kept pressuring me: you have to do this or you'll go to the front. And there it doesn't matter whether you have asthma or something else.
After a while, he was given a “baptism of fire”:
"I saw a prisoner of war—his eyes were covered with red tape, his hands and feet were also covered. The commander said, 'You haven't killed anyone yet, you need to kill someone. Here's your machine gun.' I said, 'I'm not going to kill anyone,' and so of course they beat me up. And then they said, 'If you tell your family or anyone else, we'll reset your record.' I don't know what happened to that prisoner next: rumour has it he was taken away to a base camp, and base camps usually reset your record."
— At zero?
— On the front lines.
Those who tried to escape were caught, brought to the unit and put in the pit.
"In some places they had to dig the pit themselves; in other places there was an iron grate right inside the building—that’s where people were put," Ilya says. "A day or two later, they were sent into an assault—none of them ever came back. Or they were immediately wiped out if they didn't want to fight. They brought in two deserters in front of me, started interrogating them, called them traitors, beat them on their legs with a stick. Then they sat them down on a chair, doused them with water. They attached metal wires to their fingers and turned on the current. I saw it all and said, 'You can't do that.' They said, 'If you try to tell anyone, we'll do the same to you.'"
According to Ilya, they often brought in "Veshniks," or former prisoners. They were sent straight to the front lines. Ordinary contract soldiers were held back for a week or two:
"First, the commanders take money from them, and then they'll go to the front. The commanders have all the information–all the PINs codes from phones—they have a whole drawer of phones and bank cards, which are handed over before deployment."
When Ilya called his wife and parents, his superiors were always standing nearby: they listened in on conversations, checked his messages, making sure he didn't let anything slip. For mistakes, they beat with a baton, used a stun gun, and threatened to throw him from the second floor of the headquarters.
“And if I couldn’t finish something on time, they constantly threatened me, dressed me in women’s clothes, some kind of black mask, and photographed me. They threatened that if I ran away, they would publish it. I later read online: it's called BDSM."
Photographing the dead every day isn't for everyone. Ilya's partner refused, and he was sent to the front lines.
"He lost his leg there," Ilya says. "They gave him first aid, but he deliberately loosened the tourniquet that night—and that was it. When I found out he died from blood loss, I was even more terrified, because every day they told me I'd be sent to the front lines, too."
At the end of 2024, Ilya's kidney disease worsened. When he asked to go to the hospital for an ultrasound, he was called a malingerer and beaten with a stick—on the head, stomach, and kidneys.
They eventually gave him an ultrasound. Doctors found a large kidney stone and said he needed urgent surgery. But when Ilya reported this to his commander, he was told once again, "We'll send you to the front lines, and you'll come home in a body bag."
"They already played a joke on me once: they put a bulletproof vest and a helmet on me and took me to the front line. And then they said, 'We were just joking with you.' Dark humor, they call it... They constantly mocked me. They'd come up in the middle of the night, wake me up, pour water on me, or something like that."
Escape
By this point, Ilya was seriously considering escape. He found the contact information for the "Go to the Woods" project online and contacted them. He regularly deleted their messages and made plans.
A good knowledge of Photoshop helped:
"One day, the commander came and told me to make a copy of my leave slip and send it to headquarters. I took a photo of it and saved it on my phone.
Then I made up a story about wanting to go to Donetsk for a couple of days to meet a local girl. At first, they didn't believe me: you're supposedly married. I said: "So I'll divorce my wife and marry a local, like you told me."
— They said that? Why?
– They marry some of them to local girls they know, and then they send the soldier to the front. He dies, and they split the payout between themselves."
Ilya fabricated a divorce petition and showed it to his commanders. He got in touch with a woman recommended to him and presented all this to his superiors as proof of his
"I threw all my military gear out of my backpack, leaving just a power bank, shorts, and a shirt—the bare essentials. And I called a taxi from Donetsk to Rostov."
Meanwhile, the commanders demanded proof and details of the meeting with the girl. They threatened to report him to the commandant's office and call the police if he didn’t comply. Ilya replied that they should not distract him from the date and promised to show and tell everything later.
— There were several checkpoints. At first, they simply asked whether I was a civilian or not, looked at my passport. But at the third check, they were already looking at my things, documents, and even checked me on the computer. They checked me, a red light came off, and they told me: you need to go to the “black room.” I go in, and there are people standing there with machine guns and batons. And on the right side there is a pit. I immediately realised it was a pit: there were five or six people sitting there, they were apparently trying to escape. They sat me down at a table and began interrogating me. And somehow automatically, I gave them my phone, with my leave certificate open. They ask: “Where is your military ID?” I say: “I lost it.” “What’s your call sign?” But my call sign was written on my backpack: “Vasquez.” “Which military unit?” I said. He looks: it’s all written on my leave certificate. Then he asks: “Are you married?” I say: “Yes, I am.” And then the political officer started texting me again—he saw it and gave me the phone. I said, "Yeah, he's asking about the video about me and my girlfriend hanging out." "But you went to see your wife." I said, "Well, I decided to have a little fun first." So they let me go. That’s how I made it to the Rostov train station.
Ilya took the bus to Moscow. From there, having successfully purchased a ticket with someone else's card, he flew to Perm, and from Perm he traveled home to Kungur.
There, he underwent emergency surgery. While he was recovering from the operation, he had a notable meeting with his lawyer—she had been hired just in case.
"She called me and said she had a fantastic offer for me, but 'it's not a phone conversation.' We met in my wife's office. She pulled out this little purse... I immediately suspected she had a tape recorder in there and wanted to record our conversation. She says, 'You'll have to go back to your unit, but don't worry, nothing will happen to you. We'll give you a certificate stating you were at the operation.' I say, 'Do you understand what you're saying? If I go there now, they'll torment me first, and then send me on an assault. Or maybe they'll reset my account right away.' It turns out she'd already spoken to my commander and told him where I was. Apparently, she was paid for it.
The only options were to lay low or leave immediately. There were no direct tickets to Armenia, where his friends lived. Taking a circuitous route through Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Tunisia, Ilya eventually reached Yerevan.
Here he works part-time as a photographer and collects documents to move on.
— And then what?
— I will ask for political asylum in France.
— How has what you went through changed you?
"What I saw and heard severely damaged my psyche. But it's good that there are people who are helping me recover. I've always been against war—let it end soon. I'm for peace and love!"
"NeMoscow" thanks the anti-war project "Go through the forest" for assistance in preparing the material.
