This is a first-hand chronicle of the war: the coordinator of Seek Your Own about communication with Russian prisoners of war

The blogger Vladimir Zolkin, coordinator of the project MIA Seek Your Own, told if some Russian soldiers really did not know that they were going to fight in Ukraine, if there are really so backward from civilization among them that they have never seen a toilet bowl in their lives, why it is important to communicate with relatives of prisoners of war and report on what Russian soldiers have done in Ukraine.

The blogger-journalist told about this in an interview with Vikna Novyny.

– Project Seek Your Own, what was it created for?

– From the very beginning the Russians did not know what was really happening here, they wrote there in the comments from the very first days that it was all a fake, untrue and there were no dead, no wounded.

At that moment, I asked to be given access to information about the dead and wounded. Viktor Andrusev, an official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Center for Information Resistance, and my friend created Seek Your Own. To bring information to the Russians, to show them the prisoners, the dead, so that they would understand exactly what was going on.

At the first stages of the project I started making phone calls to relatives of these people and telling them everything. Yes, I presented myself as a coordinator, that I was helping, and that’s how it was. And then I was given the opportunity to communicate with the prisoners, which I do to this day.

– Is there any way you can classify for yourself those people who came to our land to war?

– There is one type and one group. Occupiers who came to our land to kill people. If you take them apart… You can not classify them, you have to look at each separately and assess each separately.

– But you can classify the occupiers according to what they came here for. Did they know where they were going, or didn’t they?

– Most of those who came on February 23 and 24 really did not know where they were going and what would happen. They were put in cars and taken away. Prior to that, they were driven through the border area for two weeks and deprived of all opportunities for communication. And when they came to Ukraine, most did not understand exactly where they came.

But there is a unit in Chechnya, for example, and we talked to a personnel officer who reported that they knew what was going to happen there.

Some refused – on February 19, 20, 21, 22 they wrote refusals and did not go to Ukraine. And those who came in later seemed to know, but we didn’t get any more important information from them, because they say that “we were told that everything was agreed, we’ll just go to Kyiv by march and that’s it.”

It follows that Putin, the Kremlin, and whoever was in charge there wanted to take the masses. That is, they wanted to send the maximum amount of equipment and military personnel here, and sort of take everything without a fight, just crush it with the masses. Most of the military that was coming here didn’t know what to expect. I think not just most, but almost all of them didn’t know what the battle was waiting for them. If they knew how it was going to end, I think most of them really wouldn’t have come here.

– Looking through these videos, I got the impression that the vast majority of the occupiers who came here were from remote villages or dysfunctional families.

– Well, yes, I didn’t meet people from rich families, let’s just say. Even those from St. Petersburg and Moscow were people who went to serve simply because they obviously needed some work later. And it is difficult to find a job without a military ticket. Yes, these are usually people from lower social circles and from the suburbs. There were only two from Moscow and two from St. Petersburg. All the other people are from the periphery.

– Did this their standard of living in Russia have any effect on their behavior here, on the crimes they committed here?

– I don’t think their behavior is influenced by the fact that they’re from very rich families. Their behavior is influenced by the fact that they are basically very… people, low civilized, shall we say. There are more or less normal people among them, and then there are the really wild ones.

It’s no joke that some of them haven’t seen toilets. The fact that every other person has an iPhone is also a mental breakthrough for them. Because they didn’t think it could be, they use mostly Chinese ones.

There are people from poor families, with school education, I talk to them and I see that they are, if I may say so, not completely complete scumbags. And there are people with more or less normal education, but they are complete scumbags. So I wouldn’t make such gradations. It’s all individual there.

– What percentage of the Russians you talked to have an opinion and can explain why they came here?

– Practically zero. Unless there are Pskov paratroopers, that’s the elite. They tell what their task was and are more or less oriented in what they did and, in principle, in military subjects. But they don’t understand the final task either. The tactical maneuvers they performed and why are clear. But for what purpose none of them can say.

– I remember one episode when you were talking to the relatives of a captive on the telephone. And the grandmother of one of the boys told me that her grandson went to rescue Donbas, even though he had been taken prisoner in the Kyiv region. After a five-minute conversation with you, she said: “And really, how did you get there?”. In your opinion, can these conversations like this trigger thinking, analysis in Russians?

If I thought any other way, I wouldn’t be doing this. That’s the main goal of my work. Here it’s not about what the prisoners themselves think.

They have already been in these circumstances, they have seen their dead, shall we say, comrades, they have seen columns of broken equipment, Ukrainians, their humanity, that there are no Nazis here and no one is mocking them.

These people, who were captured, already understand everything. The question here is what the people listening to this understand. And from my personal correspondence, I see probably hundreds of people who have already watched this and managed to convince others that there is no need to go here.

That is, it’s not so important that they talk to each other there, it’s the end goal that’s important. So that they communicate with those who they are trying to send here, to Ukraine, so that people don’t go here.

I understand that if ten Russians don’t leave, we can keep a few Ukrainians alive. That’s what we do, it works. They listen to it, it’s the same thinking, analytics… It’s triggering, but it’s very hard. You know how many years they’ve been zombified.

But they’re still thinking, what’s the purpose? What is the goal? If we are at war with NATO, where is NATO? Where are the NATO bases? And if these geese are combatants from the biolaboratory, then why haven’t they launched them? And these are a lot of these simple questions that we ask and that we talk about all the time.

They’re being thought about, and it’s kind of disruptive to Russian propaganda. Another thing is that debunking Russian fakes should have been done a long time ago. And yes, it should have been done in Russian, without any heckling, calmly reporting. We could have been ahead of the game, and by that time there would have been a lot of people who would have realized that they were being lied to.

– If we talk about relatives, it seems that they don’t really care about the fate of their grandson or son. There is very little concern for the future of the prisoner.

– There are very different people out there. There are such mothers, you’ve heard these conversations, who don’t ask their child about his health, whether everything is ok with him, but immediately starts telling all the Russian propaganda she heard on TV. Some are really not interested in the fate of the prisoner. It’s hard to believe, but there are those who hope that he is already dead and that they will get some kind of compensation. It’s scary and wild.

And there are other cases. Recently there was a story from the prison hospital (thanks to the management of the institution that allowed to talk to these people) – it was a shocking story and I highly recommend to watch it again.

There are three Russians in hospital beds, one of them is on Ilizarov’s machine, the other has burned arms and the third just has no leg.

Mothers of two of them have already received their funeral certificates. They have already been buried everywhere, on social networks and with black ribbons attached to the photos. One mother had already received a funeral bulletin twice, so she had no hope.

And when I call her and ask if she wants to talk to her son, she does not understand what is going on. And I have to ask them for permission to record, because there’s a Russian law that they’re referring to and complaining to YouTube.

And so I ask her permission, and she: Sure, of course record it, just let me talk to my son. I understand that this is a normal mother, just like our mothers, because in Russia you don’t see such mothers very often. She communicates with her son, of course, both crying. In this conversation I heard normal human emotions.

I’m not trying to humanize them in any way, no. They are all scumbags, rushists, occupiers. But I can’t classify them somehow either, you have to watch each video separately.

Yesterday they published a pilot telling us that he was bombing antennas, not people. At the same time, the impact radius of the dropped bombs was up to 1.5 square kilometers. And I asked him: do you realize that there were maintenance personnel there?

He’s sweating, he’s starting to shake, even though it’s a voluntary interview. But he realizes he’s cornered and can’t answer anything but: I didn’t know. Of course, no one believes such people. And there are nineteen-year-olds among them, there are conscripts. These are the people who have really been deceived.

– What do you do when you realize when prisoners are blatantly lying?

– I always explain the difference between an interview and an investigation. A captive comes in, I say that I am a civilian journalist, here is my ID, I want to talk to you voluntarily on such topics, you can answer, counter-argue, or ask questions. Shall we chat?

An additional motivation is to call home, although some agree to communicate and do not call home. There are those who refuse this communication. Personally, I am not an investigator, not a lie detector.

Some people tell me that we have to put them on a lie detector. But a lie detector is an investigative action, and we have an interview, and all we can do is watch and analyze whether or not the person is lying. All this is left to the viewer’s discretion.

– Those videos where the Russians confess to the murders, including several pilots. How can they help Ukraine?

– For example, the pilot Krasnoyartsev, when he catapulted and fled from the civilian population, shot one person. He was then detained along with Makarov’s pistol, from which he fired, and ammunition. Of course, there is evidence that he killed a civilian.

He tells me this only because, most likely, he has already told everything to the investigating authorities. If the video of what I recorded can be additional proof, very good. But in fact, I think that even without the video, all the evidence has already been collected.

Although at some points it is possible to talk to the prisoner, and he tells the things that he did not say during the investigation, I think so. And maybe they say one thing there and another here, and you can work with that too.

The second function of these videos is to chronicle the war firsthand. Of course, not everyone is telling the truth. But when our military tells how they repelled Bucha, or Irpen, or Gostomel airport, we hear the same thing from the occupiers and understand that this is the real picture. Some people watch it as a documentary.

– How do you manage to listen to this stream of illogical propaganda and keep your composure to work in a balanced and calm manner?

– This is what any normal journalist would do. There are certain conventions, international treaties. We are a democratic country, we adhere to all standards. Although sometimes I behave too emotionally. I don’t watch these videos, but I remember which one I was too emotional about, and I try to hold back.

You have to set yourself up to sit and listen for five hours. You can’t do it in any other format. Not emotionally, not in a hater’s format. Some people, you know, sit in chat-roulette and try to assert themselves with these Russians.

You can’t have that here, because those videos won’t achieve the goal. They should show one hundred percent voluntary communication and maximum detail, so that the Russians watch and understand that this is not a fake.

Photo: Volodymyr Zolkin