Pavel Filatyev says he wasn't planning on tearing up his Russian passport.
But when he lands in Paris on August 28 and smokes his first cigarette on Western European soil in the airport, he is overcome with anger.
Anger at a Russian government that "doesn't give a shit" about human lives.
Anger at the war in Ukraine, where soldiers and civilians are dying senselessly.
While still in the airport smoking lounge, Filatyev pulls out his smartphone and starts recording a video.
At the end of the clip, he records himself tearing up his identity papers.
The veteran's ID that proves that Filatyev fought in the Russian army.
His military passport, which documents his many deployments as a soldier.
Filatyev pans to the snippets lying in the airport bathroom sink.
As he continues filming with his left hand, he gathers the pieces of paper that once documented his life with his right one.
Then he goes into the stall, throws the scraps into the toilet, and flushes it.
The last words of the video, which Filatyev later posts, are: "Fuck you, Putin."
Fleeing from the Russian Government
By that point, 34-year-old has been on the run from his own government for weeks, even though he claims he has done nothing other than to "tell the truth."
The truth about the war in Ukraine.
About the state of the Russian army.
Filatyev had been a member of an army unit that invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and the soldier was so taken back by what he experienced that he wrote a report about it.
He titled the 141-page exposé "Zov," which translates roughly as "the calling" in Russian.
Filatyev is seeking to appeal to the Russian public to come to their senses.
He wants you to hear about what is happening in Ukraine.
An excerpt from Filatyev's "Zov" report:
We had no moral right to attack another country, especially not the people who are closest to us … Since I was a child, I have spent much time observing how the army works, and I see that something isn't quite right with the Russian military, just as the entire world is now seeing.
Up until two months ago, Filatyev had been a normal Russian soldier.
He was born in the southwest of Russia and enlisted in the military when he turned 18. He became a paratrooper, and although he left the military in 2010, he reenlisted in the summer of 2021 to earn money to help him get through the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Then came the war in Ukraine.
"Zov" excerpt, Feb. 23, 2022, the day before the invasion of Ukraine:
The division commander arrived and announced that, starting tomorrow, we will get an extra $69 per day … Rumors began circulating that we were leaving to invade Kherson, which I thought was nonsense. Nobody knew what was going to happen the next day. I didn't even have a bulletproof vest.
It's mid-February 2022, and Filatyev's unit is stationed in Crimea.
He doesn't understand why he has been carted to the border with Ukraine, and no one tells him why.
"In the Russian army, they tell you from morning until night: You do what you are told and that's it," he will later explain in an interview in early September, a few weeks after his arrival in France.
"You don't have time to think or ask questions," Filatyev says.
So, he didn't ask.
Filatyev comes from a family of soldiers.
Before his father died of cancer in his early fifties, he had been in the same unit where his son would later serve.
As a boy, Filatyev visited him in the barracks.
His fathers' friends were also in the military.
Filtayev is an army child, and the fact that he knows little else is evident.
He drops a swear word every few sentences and asks that questions be asked "directly" and that pleasantries be dispensed with.
He feels a connection to the Russian military.
At least he did until February 2022.
"Zov" excerpt, Feb. 24, 2022, the day of the attack on Ukraine:
At 4:00 am, I open my eyes again and hear thunder; the earth is shaking. I can smell gunpowder in the air... There's a low whisper: "It's starting." We must have some kind of plan...
The young soldier takes part in the invasion of Ukraine, which begins on Feb. 24. But he knows nothing about it.
In the first hours of the war, Filatyev has no idea what he is fighting for or against.
Nobody has explained to him why his unit is moving and what goal it is pursuing.
For a while, Filatyev feels certain that the Russian army is only defending itself against foreign powers.
But when his company encounters little resistance, because the war has taken the Ukrainian forces by surprise, he comes to the realization: "We have invaded Ukraine."
"Zov" excerpt, Feb. 28, 2022:
I'm not one of those people who has illusions about the war, innocent civilians have died and died in every war... Everyone knows that, but when you recognize it, you don't know what to do. If you drop everything and leave, you become a coward and traitor. But if you keep going, you become an accomplice to death and people's suffering.
By the end of February, Russian media are no longer allowed to use the word "war" without restrictions, and soon the word is banned outright.
The Russian operation is now cynically referred to as the "special operation."
Filatyev has no idea of this.
He's living at the front in what he describes as an "information vacuum."
Mobile phones don't work, there's no internet.
There's not even communication between the different military units.
In general, many things don't seem to be going according to plan.
At one point, the Russian trucks get stuck in a field;
at another, the entire column is motionless on a narrow road, and nobody understands why.
Later, according to Filatyev, it turns out that they missed the junction and don't know how to turn back around in this terrain.
"This army doesn't need an enemy," Filatyev concludes.
"It is basically destroying itself."
There is a lack of food, sleeping bags and communication.
The soldiers feel they have been sent on a mission that no one has really thought through.
That makes the men dangerous to the Ukrainians who sometimes draw near the convoys.
"Zov" excerpt, Feb. 28, 2022:
The feeling of fear and the adrenaline rush never subsides, I don't know what awaits me. I understand, of course, that we are uninvited guests here … But nobody wants to explain to the civilians "why the hell we came here." We don't even know ourselves, for Christ's sake. It's too late to argue about it though. You're now on the front lines, and that means that it's either you or me.
In many places in Ukraine, Russian soldiers are committing atrocities against civilians.
Filatyev doesn't describe any such crimes, but he does recount second-hand stories about how Russian troops once shelled a civilian car, killing a mother and her children.
Filatyev's unit first storms Kherson and then attempts, but ultimately fails, to take Mykolaiv, a major city further to the northwest.
By this point, some soldiers are now so fatigued that they are falling asleep on duty, Filatyev reports.
Others shoot their own limbs in the hope of being allowed to leave the battlefield.
But it's of no use: Commanders have orders not to evacuate anyone with only "minor injuries."
"Zov" excerpt, March 7, 2022:
Every time the shelling started, I pressed my head into the ground and thought to myself: "God, if I survive, I will do everything I can to stop this!" I didn't know how, but I wanted everybody who is responsible for this shit and this chaos in our army to be punished. I wanted this war to stop.
It's April, and one day Filatyev gets dirt in his eye as he squeezes into a trench.
The next day his right eyelids are stuck together, and he could be at risk of going blind.
His superiors decide to have him taken to a clinic despite the orders not to.
He is driven to Crimea, where he learns that a war that has almost cost him his eye and has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians can't even be referred to as a war.
That the Russian leadership is concealing the extent of the losses.
Already angry, Filatyev decides to make good on the promise he made to himself: He wants to at least try to stop the war.
In May, he begins typing his experiences into his mobile phone.
For 45 days, he hacks letters onto its screen.
He ends up with 141 pages.
A reckoning with the war and the Russian leadership.
"Zov" excerpt:
I can't believe my ears when I learn that it is forbidden to say the word "war." Seriously. was? What the hell else is this supposed to be? The law that is supposed to prevent the armed forced from being discredited is being directed at the armed forces themselves!
The soldier knows what he could face if he publishes or posts words like these: Statements that put the Russian army in bad light are punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Filatyev says he is aware of the risks.
But he doesn't have a wife or children, so there's no one he could endanger with his actions.
And it is his moral obligation to describe what he experienced, he says.
In any case, the armed forces leave him few options.
After his eye heals, he is given a choice: either return to Ukraine to continue fighting there or face prosecution.
Filatyev is getting attack and attack.
He writes to oppositional bloggers and asks them to publish what he experienced in Ukraine, but few answer him.
Many are apparently afraid of speaking out against the "special operation."
In the end, he decides to post his experiences on his own.
In early August, Filatyev uploads his manuscript to VKontakte, Russia's largest social network.
After that, he packs his bag and sets off for Moscow.
His report can still be found on VKontakte for a few weeks before the network deletes it.
The soldier says he received countless messages during that time: In them, colleagues in the military praise him for "telling it like it is."
But the outcry is smaller than Filatyev had hoped for.
Part of him did actually believe that the Russian people would stand up against Putin if they found out what is really happening in Ukraine.
But many Russians probably suspect it anyway.
They are either indifferent or don't dare to stand up to their government.
Recently, though, the situation has changed, at least a bit.
Since Vladimir Putin announced his mobilization last week, people have taken to the streets in protest in many Russian cities, resulting in the arrests of hundreds.
Even men who are now to be sent to war are also rebelling in some individual cases.
One Russian reportedly set himself on fire in protest in the city of Ryazan, and a reservist shot and seriously wounded the head of a draft office in the Irkutsk region.
Others who are supposed to fight are leaving the country.
But few are speaking out as strongly against the war as Filatyev is.
"Zov" excerpt:
I have met a whole lot of people who are against the war and a few who say that we probably had no other choice … Now, the moment has come in which we need to tell the truth, and the truth is that the majority in Russia and in Ukraine don't want us to be killing each other. As this majority remains silent, more and more people are being drawn into the war.
Filatyev's life is no longer the same after he posts the manuscript.
He spends the month of August sleeping at a different place each night and tapping his savings to cover food and lodging.
He expects to be arrested for publicly "discrediting" the armed forces at any time.
At the end of August, Gulagu.net, a human rights organization providing him with support, urges him to leave the country, warning that he will soon disappear into prison for years if he doesn't.
At first, Filatyev refuses to turn his back on Russia.
"I did nothing wrong and always wanted only the best for my country."
But then, he says, he realized that he would be forced to retract his statements about the war in prison.
"Then it all would have been for nothing."
Filatyev flees first to Tunisia and then to Paris, where he applies for political asylum.
It's the beginning of September, and Filatyev is sitting under the French sun, looking out at the sea.
He looks tired, and his skin has an ash undertone.
Filatyev has given dozens of interviews since he arrived in France in late August and he hasn't been able to get much sleep.
He also had stomach troubles.
But he still has more appointments scheduled for the day.
"I want to do everything possible to get Russia moving in a better direction," says Filatyev.
Not all the details in Filatyev's report can be fully verified, but DER SPIEGEL believes it is credible.
To back up his story, Filatyev provides photos and documents that confirm his deployments as a soldier.
He answers every question without equivocation or embellishment, nor does he spare himself.
Filatyev says he feels no personal guilt, that he didn't choose to be deployed to Ukraine.
The point right now, he says, is to show the world that not every Russian supports this government and the war.
Sometimes it seems as if Filatyev wants first and foremost to save his own country, and only secondly the neighboring nation it invaded.
But Filatyev also could have remained silent about the war in Ukraine, as most other soldiers and citizens in Russia have done.
Instead, he decided to stand up and to raise his voice in public against the war - a step for which he is paying a high price.
He now finds himself alone in a country he has never visited before and whose language he doesn't speak.
He's living in a vacation home on the edge of the resort city of Biarritz in southwestern France.
He doesn't know how long he can stay here.
Friends and relatives back home in Russia have cut ties with him, presumably out of self-preservation.
When asked how he sees his future, Filatyev just shrugs.
"Did I imagine my life turning out like this? Certainly not," he says.
"But if only 100 men who read my book say: 'I don't want to be a part of this crap' – then I have already achieved something."
He sounds more disillusioned than heroic.
Filatyev's only possessions are in the corner of his living room: a black leather bag containing a few T-shirts and pants, and two pairs of shoes.
That was all he could take with him, and it's all that's left of life he hath led so far.
A Decision of Conscience
"But I don't regret anything," he says.
In material terms, I have lost everything.
But I behaved as my heart and conscience told me to.
I am at peace with myself."
"Zov" excerpt:
I know that this gesture of peace will cost me dearly, but I cannot silence my conscience … I was not afraid of the war in Ukraine, but it hurt me that I couldn't change anything. I am afraid of publishing this text in my country, to express my opinion, because one can no longer tell the truth in Russia... A happy future for our country is becoming ever more distant. NOT TO WAR!!!