Vladislav Ammosov has been vetted by Ukraine’s army and security services and is now assembling the military unit, called the Siberian Battalion, Poland’s dziennik.pl website reported on Tuesday, citing Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe.
The former Russian officer, who hails from the remote Siberian city of Yakutsk, said he was ready to fight the enemies of his homeland, meaning “those who currently support the Putin government,” according to Newsweek magazine.
Ammosov told Radio Liberty he had joined the Russian army in the mid-1990s and went on to take part, as a young officer, in the Second Chechen War, according to dziennik.pl.
He said that at the time he was “an imperialist who fell for propaganda” and had been taught “to destroy entire countries," The New Voice of Ukraine reported.
However, the reality of the Chechen war came as “a shock,” Ammosov said, adding that he had been swayed by the Chechens’ defiant stand against Russian troops, in what was essentially “a war of national liberation” for the North Caucasian republic, dziennik.pl reported.
‘We are slaves in Putin’s system’
Referring to the Russian army and political system, Ammosov said: "Russia spares no one, especially its own people.”
He added, as quoted by Newsweek magazine: "I finally realised that we are slaves to the system created by Putin and his clique. I had no choice but to free myself from it."
He declared in the interview with Radio Free Europe that he was prepared to be part of "a sabotage and reconnaissance group to go into Russian territory and destroy enemies there," according to Newsweek.
Ammosov also said that the portrayal of Ukraine by Russian propaganda as “a fascist country” was “laughable.”
“There is no more fascist country than Russia,” he added, according to dziennik.pl.
As of Tuesday, the interview with Ammosov had attracted more than 924,000 views on YouTube, and there was praise for him among the over 1,100 comments from users, Newsweek reported.
Soldiers from Russia’s Siberian republics such as Yakutsya, Buryatia and Tuva, which are populated by ethnic minorities, form a large part of the Kremlin’s invading army in Ukraine, the Polish website reported.
According to some analysts, Russia’s political and military authorities are seeking to spare ethnic Russians from the draft as much as possible, fearful that military mobilisation might spark social unrest in the European part of the country, dziennik.pl said.
Tuesday is day 412 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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Source: dziennik.pl, newsweek.com, The New Voice of Ukraine