Meeting in Paris with a Russian deserter soldier: "I'm not afraid. I should already be dead."

Special Envoy to Paris"Never think that war, no matter how necessary or justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry, ask the dead." Ernest Hemingway wrote this quote in the novel For whom the bells toll, set during the Spanish Civil War.

This sentence was sent to me on Monday via Telegram by Daniil Arkhipov, a 24-year-old Russian man. Daniil Arkhipov has never read Hemingway: "I like science fiction more." Daniil Arkhipov knows nothing about the Spanish Civil War: "I had never heard of it." But Daniil Arkhipov knows war all too well: "I can't get the stench of blood and rotten flesh out of my head.Nor that smell of gunpowder and sweat that we all carried with us."

Daniil Arkhipov is one of the countless young Russians whom Vladimir Putin forced to fight in the war in Ukraine. He was part of the 83rd Assault Brigade and took part in operations on the Kherson front, the Zaporizhzhia front, and the Donbas front, specially in the city of Bakhmut, where one of the worst battles of the invasion took place. In the summer of 2023, he deserted the Russian army after deliberately detonating a grenade on himself to tear off his hand. He says it was the only way to leave the front alive. Less than a month ago, he arrived in France, where he is trying to request political asylum. France is the only country in the European Union that has publicly opened its doors to granting political asylum to Russian soldiers who desert.

The conversation continued on Monday on Telegram.

—Why are you sending me this Hemingway quote?

—That's what I think about wars. There is nothing dirtier than trying to justify a war. I've always rejected war, the only difference now is that I understand its horror from personal experience.

—But you took part in one.

—Yes, against my will. As a human being, I would like the war to end as soon as possible, no matter how. But if we think politically, the Russian army must be defeated because this war threatens democracy in the world: a Russian victory would mean the effectiveness of an authoritarian dictatorship.

—Aren't you afraid to say this publicly, using your real name?

—I don't want to hide anymore. It's necessary to openly protest against this war, which is the result of sheer madness. I'm not afraid of anything anymore. When I was on the front, I had already accepted death. I should already be dead.

On Monday, ARA proposed an in-person interview with Daniil Arkhipov. He immediately accepted. He met us two days later, on Wednesday, at a bar in a suburb west of Paris, where he lives in a refugee shelter. "I'll be wearing a blue jacket and black pants," he had written to me on Telegram.

The first thing I think when I see him is that he looks even younger than he is. He has the face of a boy. He waits nervously at the bar's entrance, insistently puffing on a kiwi and passion fruit-flavoured vape. "Do you smoke? Want one?" he asks me. It's been almost two years since he deserted, but he still suffers from post-traumatic stress. He struggles to sleep at night. He dreams that they will come for him and take him back to the front. It happens when he's awake too: paranoia and panic attacks haunt him.

"Before the war, I was a normal guy with a normal life and normal dreams." Daniil Arkhipov will repeat this often. He wants to reclaim his old life. He was born in 2000 in the Baiskortostan region, near the border with Kazakhstan. There, he went to school, high school, and studied for a degree in electrical engineering. Later, he and almost his entire family moved to the city of Norilsk, in northern Russia, where he started working for a mining company. His father was also an electrician. His mother was a homemaker. He has two brothers, but prefers not to share details about his family for security reasons.

Shoot, attack, kill

In autumn 2022, a few months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, he received a letter from the military summoning him to enlist. It was sent to his workplace, and his boss personally informed him that he had been called up for war. By then, Russia had already failed in its attempt to seize Kiev, and what was supposed to be a swift, days-long blitzkrieg had turned into a dark and deadly trench war, where corpses piled up among Moscow's troops. "My mother had told me to hide, not to open the door to anyone. But once I was drafted, there was no turning back: I was more afraid of how the government could punish me than of going to war."

—Did you know where they were sending you?

—No. They gave us an information session and a few weeks of military training, but the officers didn't answer our questions. One day, they handed out a Bible and a propaganda pamphlet that said we were fighting "for good and against Ukrainian nationalism and global Satanism."

—Were they preparing you to fight?

—Yeah, of course. And I didn't want to kill anyone. But during that training, I was taught to be an assault soldier, infantry. And I already knew that the job of an assault soldier is to shoot, attack, kill, and clear trenches. I was terrified.

After Crimea, Kherson, and Zaporizhia, Daniil Arkhipov was sent to the front in Bakhmut, in the Donbas. It was June 2023, and the Russian army already controlled the city, but the fighting with Ukrainian forces was still fierce. No one knows how many Russian soldiers —nor Ukrainian ones—died in Bakhmut, but it was one of the deadliest battles of the war. Daniil Arkhipov remembers vividly the first time he was sent to the battlefield. He says Bakhmut was no longer a city; only rubble and burnt-out buildings remained. He explains that half of his brigade didn't return after the first assault on the front. He says that some bodies were never recovered. He explains that before each attack, many soldiers had a ritual: they tied Saint George's ribbons to their helmets or arms, hoping heaven would protect them.

—Did you do that too?

—No. I stopped believing in religion. I saw many men die who wore the St. George's ribbons or had Bibles in their pockets. If God exists, why does he allow wars like this one?

—What do you remember most about those days?

—The first decomposing corpse I saw. The smell, the blackness of the flesh, the shapes of the face... It's inhuman. Then you get used to it, because death is everywhere. Once, we were under attack and I ran into the basement. I sat down on a tarp, thinking it was a sack. It was a corpse. The other soldiers just told me to get up, without batting an eye.

—What’s your worst memory?”

—The death of my friend. He was 35, and a shrapnel pierced his stomach. He was dying. He died slowly, at dusk, as the sun was setting. I stayed by his side the whole time, watching him. I hated feeling so powerless.

—You say you had already accepted your death.

—Yes, I had accepted that I would end up dying. And I thought that if I was going to die, at least I could choose how I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die killing, being a murderer. So I decided to try to escape.

—Did you kill anyone?

—No. If I had killed someone, I wouldn't have deserted.

Wars push the human instinct for survival to its limits. Daniil Arkhipov thought that the only way he could return home alive was if he got injured and became unfit to fight. The best way was to detonate a grenade in his hand. But it had to be calculated carefully: if he detonated the entire grenade, he would die; but if he only triggered the fuse, the impact would probably only tear off a hand. He chose his right hand. Enough to prevent him from returning to the war.

One afternoon in July, while they were taking positions in a forest in the Donbas, he hid among the trees and detonated the fuse of the grenade, pretending to be the victim of a tripwire placed by the Ukrainians. He only remembers the screams of his comrades. And the pain. He was transferred to a military hospital. And then to another. He needed emergency surgery. After the surgery, the doctors gave him some unsettling news: they had been able to save his hand, but he had lost his little finger. Without his little finger, he could continue fighting on the front once he recovered. The army had already notified him that he had to return to the frontlines soon.

It was then that Daniil Arkhipov finally decided to desert. He hid for a few months in Russia before secretly leaving the country. For security reasons, he asks not to share the details of the route that brought him to Paris. It's to protect other soldiers who may be thinking of deserting or are currently doing so.

—What would have happened if they had caught you?

—I don't think they would have imprisoned me. They would have sent me back to the front, but this time in a penal unit, with prisoners. That's the most common outcome for deserters who get caught. These units are almost a death sentence. They are the units of death. They are used in suicide operations.

Desertions, a practice as old as war itself, are common in Russia and Ukraine. Many soldiers injure themselves because escaping during the recovery period is much easier than doing so from the frontlines. There are no official figures on how many Russian soldiers have deserted since the start of the invasion. Nor are there official numbers on how many Russian corpses are now buried underground. The figures are likely horrifying: at the Ukrainian fronts, deaths and killings have reached rates similar to those of World War II.

Over the years, several Ukrainian soldiers have explained that Putin’s troops are used as mere cannon fodder, thrown in masses against the defensive lines of Kyiv. "They don't even collect the corpses. When some die, others come in and try to advance over the bodies of other Russians who have already tried. It's endless", a Ukrainian soldier who was fighting to defend the city of Avdiivka, in Donetsk, told me a few months ago. Daniil Arkhipov confirms this "butchery" tactic. "The casualties were catastrophic. I don't know how many died, but it was a lot. I don't think Putin was infromed about the number of deaths on the front, mainly because he never cared."

A black and red tattoo

At one point in the interview, I notice that on his right arm—the same one he tried to mutilate with the grenade—a large tattoo is visible. He shows it to me. It covers most of his forearm and depicts a human face, but with the mouth and teeth of a beast, a monster. It’s a dark tattoo, shaded only in black and blood red.

—What does it mean?

—I'm not really sure. I saw it on the internet and I liked it. After the war, I felt the need to get a tattoo. I got it done during my escape.

—Are you a different person after the war?

—Absolutely. I don't see humanity the same way anymore. I believe wars will never end as long as there are human beings in the world. We have an animal instinct.

—How do you see the future?

—I don't know. I hope I'm lucky and get asylum here in France. But what I desire the most is to find inner peace. I don't have it now. Once you've accepted your death, it's hard to live again.

Throughout many moments of the interview, he seems agitated. He clenches his eyes tightly, has some facial tics, constantly moves his legs, and at times, he stares blankly, as if disconnecting. I ask him one last question before wrapping up the interview.

—What would you say to the Ukrainian soldiers on the other side of the trench?

—That I didn't feel any hatred toward them. On the contrary. And that I understood that they, at least, were fighting because they were defending their land and their people from an invasion.

The interview ends. We say goodbye to Daniil Arkhipov, who he heads back to the shelter where he lives with other refugees and asylum seekers. He is the only Russian. Most come from Africa. "What are you going to do now?" I ask him. "Try to get some rest and hopefully sleep."

Back in Paris, I write to a Ukrainian soldier via WhatsApp, one who also fought in the Battle of Bakhmut. Perhaps he was very close to Daniil Arkhipov. Maybe they exchanged some gunfire. Maybe they saw each other through the lens of some killer drone. Maybe, under different circumstances, they would have been friends

—I just interviewed a Russian soldier who deserted the army because he was against this war. He also fought in Bakhmut,” I tell him.

—I don’t care. He fought in Bakhmut, and therefore, he attacked us. I don’t care if he did it for money, for an idea, or out of fear. I have no respect for him.