The shell burst out of the mortar with a flash and an explosion that reverberated across the war-shattered Ukrainian landscape, hurtling towards nearby Russian troops.
“Our task is to support the units of the armed forces of Ukraine that work here. We locate and destroy enemy targets,” said the mortar unit’s commander. He identified himself only as Zhora, his codename. “The enemy came on to Ukrainian land to shoot at civilians and destroy infrastructure. We are attempting to prevent this.”
Zhora’s team was based only three miles from Russian-held territory, in one of the thousands of homes in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region that have been abandoned by their owners. The boom of incoming and outgoing artillery was almost constant.
Yet Zhora and his men are not Ukrainians. They are Russian citizens who are fighting for Ukraine against Vladimir Putin’s regime as part of the Freedom of Russia Legion, a military unit whose operations are overseen by Ukrainian intelligence.
As well as seeing action in eastern Ukraine, the Legion has carried out armed incursions into Russian border towns in the Belgorod region, clashing with the Kremlin’s troops and even briefly occupying patches of territory. In Moscow, it has been declared a terrorist organisation and people have been sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for allegedly plotting to carry out acts of sabotage on its behalf.
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Its members are a mixed bunch, ranging from fresh-faced teenagers to former Russian soldiers who have switched allegiance. “I left the Russian army after what I saw during the war in Chechnya,” said one recruit in his early fifties, referring to the Kremlin’s brutal military campaign in the southern Russian republic. Like many of the Legion’s members, he asked not to be identified over fears that relatives in Russia could face reprisals.
The Legion will not reveal its exact fighting strength but it is estimated to have built up a force of hundreds since it was formed almost two years ago. Russian citizens are not allowed by law to serve in Ukraine’s regular armed forces and potential recruits to the Legion must pass rigorous checks, including a polygraph test and psychological appraisals.
Among its growing ranks is Dani Akel, a Russian opposition activist who has helped organise protests against Putin. On the morning that the Kremlin ordered tanks into Ukraine, Akel, a 26-year-old philosophy graduate, was recovering from a night out clubbing in Moscow. As he watched online video of Russian missiles raining down on Ukrainian cities, he realised that his old life was over.
“A missile strike on Kyiv. It was like, I don’t know, an alien invasion or something,” he said, after taking part in a live-fire training exercise near snow-covered woodland. “But I’d already realised for a long time that such a moment would come.”
Within a week Akel was on a train to the north of Russia, where he illegally crossed into Estonia, scrambling through marshy woodland and clambering over a large border fence to reach the European Union. His departure probably saved him from arrest; after he had left, friends in Moscow said that police were searching for him over his “extremist” views, a catch-all term in Russia for anti-Putin activism.
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Akel was driven, he said, by a burning desire to fight for Ukraine and strike a blow against the Kremlin, as well as defend what he described as western liberal values. “There was a lot of hatred at that moment inside me — hatred specifically towards the [Putin] regime,” he said, speaking in an icy field that was littered with bullet casings.
The son of a Russian mother and a Syrian father, Akel spent eight years of his childhood in Aleppo, the Syrian city that would later be flattened by the Kremlin’s bombs. “I loathe our authorities, I’m fighting against those bastards,” he said. His sworn foes include his cousin, a minor official with Putin’s ruling party in St Petersburg.
Within a year of leaving Russia, after a four-month stint in an Estonian centre for illegal migrants and a protracted struggle to obtain a Ukrainian visa, Akel crossed into Ukraine. He took on the codename Apostle and began military training with the Legion. “That was when my new life began,” he said. Like many others, he had served briefly in the Russian army before the start of the war in 2022. However, he had no combat experience.
The Legion would not say how many of its fighters have been killed during operations against Russian forces. But Akel visibly struggled as he spoke about the recent death of a comrade-in-arms who went by the name of Sotnik.
“I was fourth in the line when we went on an assault operation on [Russian] positions. I should have been first but I swapped with Sotnik, literally just ten minutes before the explosion because he had a map. He took responsibility as the most experienced in the group. He was blown up by a mine. It was just a second and he was mincemeat.”
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He took a deep breath and looked away, towards the nearby forest, as if reliving the scene. “There was nothing left of him — his legs and arms were like rags. Like a towel when you twist it into a knot. The same with his arms,” he sighed. “The young guy who was second in the line lost his legs. He was only 20 or 21.”
Even younger is a 19-year-old reconnaissance drone operator, codename Zaza, who first spoke to The Times when he joined up a year ago. “The most difficult moment so far has been when we came under tank fire. You have no idea where the next explosion is going to come,” he said. “But I love freedom — freedom in all senses of the word.”
The Legion’s fighters showed few regrets about killing or injuring their former compatriots on the battlefields of Ukraine. “For me, when the battles begin, this is work. Bloody work. But it’s necessary because I plan to return to Russia when it is free,” said Blanch, another former opposition activist from Moscow.
Many of the fighters have family ties in Ukraine and had been living in the country for years on residency permits when the invasion began. As Russian citizens are barred from serving in the Ukrainian army, the Legion is increasingly being used to accommodate those who want to defend their adopted homeland. Zhora, the mortar team leader, moved to Ukraine with his mother when he was a teenager after his parents split up. He said he had quarrelled with his father in Russia at the start of the war and has not spoken to him since. “Russian propaganda is more important to him than his own son,” he said.
The Legion is not the only pro-Ukrainian group of Russian fighters. Another unit, called the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), is led by Denis Nikitin, a notorious former football hooligan who goes by the nickname “White Rex” and has been accused of links to neo-Nazi groups.
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Although the two groups often operate in conjunction during raids into Russia, some of the Legion’s members said they were put off by the RVC’s far-right views. Akin defined his political philosophy as centre-right, while others said they were libertarians, leftwingers or simply “democratic”.
The Legion’s commander, Maximillian Andronnikov, also known as Caesar, is a former member of the ultranationalist Russian Imperial Movement, which has been designated a terrorist group by the United States. However, Andronnikov is thought to have cut all ties with the group over a decade ago and now describes himself as a “constitutional monarchist” who admires Margaret Thatcher.
After the death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison camp last week, the Legion urged the opposition leader’s supporters to swell its numbers. “Like all of you, we dream of a beautiful Russia of the future. Be strong and turn your anger into revenge. Destroy Putinism with us,” it said in an online video. But few in the Legion are making plans for any kind of future. “When you start to talk about the future, everyone just laughs or looks at you like, ‘yeah, right…’” said Akel.
They are also under no illusions about what would happen to them if they were taken captive by Russian troops and brought back to Moscow. Putin is widely thought to divide his opponents into enemies and traitors, with the most gruesome punishments reserved for the latter. In his eyes, the Legion’s fighters would deserve no mercy.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less than torture, of them trying to force information out of me that I don’t have, just for their own amusement,” said Akel. “And an endless prison term, with violence and rape. It would be stupid to expect anything else.”
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Additional reporting by Kateryna Malofieieva
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