‘I took a grenade blast to escape’: Russian deserters speak to The Times
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Nikolai’s assault unit was told to advance on a Ukrainian position, he decided he’d rather blow up his own arm than continue to fight. Nikolai and two other former Russian soldiers tell The Times about their harrowing experiences at war– and why they decided to flee.
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Guest: Jack Clover, assistant foreign news editor, The Times and The Sunday Times.
Host: Luke Jones.
Producer: Micaela Arneson.
Read more: ‘I took a grenade blast to escape’: Russian deserters speak out
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is The Story. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Luke Jones. |
| 0:06.0 | It's May in the violently contested Dernetsk region in Ukraine's east, and a soldier we're calling Nikolai has been sent to the front line with his assault unit. |
| 0:24.6 | You see these Ukrainian villages completely bombed out. There's nothing there. There's not one whole house, not one whole cellar, no inhabitants at all. |
| 0:43.3 | Nikolai is a Russian soldier, and he's been speaking to the Times on the condition of anonymity, so one of my colleagues has re-recorded what he said. |
| 0:49.3 | When he was ordered to advance on the Ukrainian position, Nikolai came to a decision. |
| 0:55.8 | At that point, I realised it was a complete mess. I didn't want it anymore. |
| 1:00.9 | But there's no resigning from the Russian army. Nikolai couldn't just go up to his commander and say, |
| 1:05.8 | I've had enough. I realized that, well, I'm either going to shoot myself, surrender or somehow get taken to a hospital. |
| 1:14.1 | So I left the line. |
| 1:18.2 | Went into the nearest settlement, went into an empty house, found a room and threw a grenade and then my arm into that room. |
| 1:27.4 | It was shattered. Music and threw a grenade and then my arm into that room. |
| 1:27.7 | It was shattered. |
| 1:36.4 | Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have fled the war in Ukraine. |
| 1:40.5 | This year, the number is expected to be a record high. |
| 1:47.6 | So today, we have the stories of three of them. |
| 1:52.7 | The story today, the Russian soldiers fleeing war. |
| 2:07.2 | It's obviously very difficult to get a former Russian soldier to confide in you a story which could land them in prison or worse. |
| 2:12.2 | But my colleague Jack Clover, who is assistant foreign news editor at the Times and the Sunday Times, has been building up a relationship with an organisation called Go Through the Forest. |
| 2:17.2 | They look after disaffected |
| 2:18.6 | Russians. I've been in touch with them since 2023 with this organisation, and I have spoken |
| 2:25.7 | to Russian soldiers before, but this is the first time that I've sort of had that kind of personal |
... |
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