Wednesday 15 June 2022 10:10 PM Ukraine's newest heroes: How brave Russian defectors have joined Kyiv's forces trends now
Like all his Ukrainian army comrades, Volodymyr Grotskov is fuelled by deeply-held patriotism as he risks his life on the bloodstained frontline of the brutal war against Russia.
The 48-year-old electrical engineer says he loves his country and sees the Kremlin as a destructive 'cancer' threatening the world's peace and security. 'It might sound pretentious but I'm fighting for freedom and democracy,' he insists.
Yet there is one big difference between Grotskov and all the other soldiers in his brigade who are sitting beside us, eating borscht and cleaning their guns while the thunder of artillery bombardment crashes around the battered Donbas frontline.
For this member of the Ukrainian military is Russian – and he is fighting to liberate his country from dictatorship as well as the preservation of his adopted nation.
'So what would happen if you were caught?' I asked this quietly-spoken soldier as we talked in his unit's temporary farmhouse base. 'Death would happen,' he replied with a laugh, admitting that many compatriots would see him as a traitor.
Yet he is among scores of Russians so infuriated by Vladimir Putin's barbarity and corruption that they have defected to Kyiv's side – including captured prisoners of war and even a senior official in one of Moscow's central financial institutions.
'Guys from Russia – if you hate Putin's regime and want Russia to become a free, democratic country, join us,' declared Igor Volobuev, the former vice-president of Gazprombank, last week.
Certainly Grotskov subscribes to such views. When we met close to some of the fiercest fighting in the deadly battlegrounds south of Izyum, he told me about the personal journey that led him to take up arms against his nation's forces.
Scores of Russians are so infuriated by Vladimir Putin's barbarity and corruption that they have defected to Kyiv's side – including captured prisoners of war and even a senior official in one of Moscow's central financial institutions (Freedom of Russia legion in Ukraine's armed forces pictured having taken a Russian tank)
Volodymyr Grotskov, 48, says he loves his country and sees the Kremlin as a destructive 'cancer' threatening the world's peace and security. 'It might sound pretentious but I'm fighting for freedom and democracy,' he insists.
His awakening began 11 years ago when pro-democracy protests erupted across Russia following ballot-rigging and fraud to fix the success of Putin's party in parliamentary elections.
Grotskov joined small demonstrations in his home town of Kandalaksha after discovering a video posted by Alexei Navalny – the anti-corruption campaigner who has since survived a poisoning attack and been jailed.
The video, based on documents obtained by Navalny, exposed how billions of pounds were stolen from an oil pipeline project by one of Putin's closest cronies.
Grotskov said: 'I was shocked by the scale of corruption and injustice that was organised at the highest level. I started to look into the political and economic situation and realised that we need to fight this regime.'.
The soldier, whose family remain in Russia, began putting up posters and joining protests. But after Putin illegally seized Crimea from
