A soldier from the Voronezh region who took part in the invasion of Ukraine and runs a blog on Instagram and other platforms, Alexander Lunin, has recorded a video message addressed to Vladimir Putin.
Within four hours, the video had racked up more than 3.5 million views and more than 125,000 likes on Instagram.
In the video, Lunin claims that on June 24 and 25, officials visited him, including representatives of the Defense Ministry and other security agencies. He says they asked him to relay a message to the president of Russia: “If he doesn’t grant an audience live on the air, I will tell the whole truth about what is happening in our country right now.”
Lunin did not explain why officials chose him specifically for this mission.
Here is what else Lunin said:
Right now, dozens — hundreds, thousands — of our soldiers are rotting in zindans [in pits], thrown there by their own commanders. Just sitting, rotting, being tortured and abused by what their own ranks call the Gestapo. Why? For refusing to follow idiotic, suicidal orders. For refusing to hand over their own money. And in the end they are zeroed out, listed as missing in action. Vladimir Vladimirovich, pay attention to this, invite me to see you.
The consequences will be very serious. If I don’t come to the Kremlin in the near future and speak, live, alongside you, the army will turn its weapons against the Kremlin — I am only passing on a message.
In a separate video, Lunin says that “this is not a bluff,” and that if anything happens to him or his family, “it will be a signal for action to begin.” He says he is willing to identify who allegedly visited him and delivered the message for Putin only to the president himself, live on the air.
“I am passing on a message, nothing more. I am not the leader of a rebellion. They came to me for one simple reason: because I cannot be bought, because the president has heard me [sic],” Lunin added, promising “a meat grinder in the country.”
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