It took several weeks of sleeping in a makeshift bed in a grenade crate, hiding from the Ukrainians, amid a sense of guilt, for the Russian officer to come to the conclusion: the war in Ukraine was not a battle for him.
His story is impressive. The Russian officer, whose identity was withheld by CNN, regretted taking part in the fighting against Ukraine and one day met the commander to announce his resignation.
"We were dirty and tired. People around us were dying. I didn't want to feel like I was a part of it, but I was a part of it," he declared.
The officer may be just one of many people who gave up participating in the war. Among the opponents are also soldiers, recruiters and military professionals.
The resigned officer stated that he was part of the massive build-up of troops in western Russia. He said that on February 22, he and an entire battalion were invited to hand over their mobile phones and be stationed in Krasnodar, in the south of the country, without explanation.
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"That night, they (Russian soldiers) spent hours painting military vehicles white. Then they told them to wash them and draw the letter 'Z', like 'Zorro', he declared. "The next day they took us to Crimea. To be honest, I thought we wouldn't go to Ukraine. I didn't think it would come to this."
He added that he and fellow fighters were completely isolated from information about the action.
"Many did not understand what it was all about and what we are doing here. Two days later they ordered us to Ukraine. Some guys refused. They wrote reports and left. I don't know what happened to them. I I stayed. I don't know why."
The unnamed officer added that he did not know the purpose of the mission, while Russian President Vladimir Putin's "bombastic" claims about the "denazification" of Ukraine did not hold water for the men who were asked to fight.
He added that he hoped for a diplomatic solution and that he felt guilty for the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, but he himself was not capable of politics.
The first thing the officer remembers is when his unit crossed the border with a long convoy of vehicles. He headed northwest, to Kherson.
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"As we approached a village, a man with a whip jumped out and started flogging the Ukrainians in the convoy, shouting: 'You are all dead,'" the officer recalled.
The official of the Russian army stated that in the first week of the fighting he was in a serious condition and could not think of anything.
"I went to bed thinking: today is March 1. Tomorrow I will wake up, it will be March 2. The main thing is to live another day. Several times the shells fell very close. It's a miracle that none of us died," he confessed.
Rus recalled the moments when they learned the rewards they would receive after fighting.
"It was a reaction like, oh, another 15 days here and it will close the loan."
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Speaking about the desertions, the officer said that it has become a mass phenomenon. About 1 Russian soldiers have so far given up the fight, and thousands more have been killed by Ukrainian forces.
"What will happen next, I don't know, but I'm happy to be back home," he said in an interview with CNN.
