Free Republic

ASTANA, Kazakhstan — If the choice was death or a bullet to the leg, Yevgeny would take the bullet. A decorated hero of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Yevgeny told his friend and fellow soldier to please aim carefully and avoid bone. The tourniquets were ready. The pain that followed was the price Yevgeny paid for a new chance at life. Like thousands of other Russian soldiers, he deserted. “I joke that I gave birth to myself,” he said, declining to give his full name for fear of retribution. “When a woman gives birth to a child, she experiences very intense...

Even by the standards of the important military officers who came and went in this tiny village, the man walking behind the Kamaz truck stood out. Soldiers providing security peered from behind fences, their guns bristling in every direction. Two Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters circled overhead, providing additional cover for Col. Gen. Alexander Chaiko as he escorted an aid convoy in March from the schoolhouse on Tsentralna Street that Russian officers commandeered as a headquarters. Fifteen minutes away, in the village of Ozera, the lives of three men were about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. While Chaiko...