A Russian soldier blew up his unit’s headquarters before escaping and defecting to Ukraine, Kyiv has revealed.

The soldier, an FPV (first person view) drone pilot known by his call-sign “Silver”, said on Wednesday that he was driven to switch sides after witnessing atrocities committed by his Storm-Z assault unit.

Ukraine’s military intelligence, HUR, revealed the secret operation and his defection had been meticulously planned for months with the help of the Freedom of Russia Legion (FRL), a Russian partisan group fighting for Ukraine.

In secretly recorded footage from inside the basement of the headquarters, officers in the Storm-Z unit, which are usually made up of ex-convicts or former mercenaries, are seen talking and cleaning their guns.

Once the unit commander and officers go to bed, a huge explosion erupts inside the room.

Battalion commander seriously wounded

“There were about 15 people in the basement,” Silver said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday.

“There was a pipe directly above the bed where they were sleeping that went into the street next to the entrance, and we decided to throw two grenades into this pipe so that they would explode next to them,” he added.

The blast severely wounded the battalion commander, according to reports.

The soldier then reportedly left anti-infantry mines on the road, before taking a pre-arranged route across the front line into Ukrainian territory and surrendering to Kyiv’s forces.

Silver said he had become disillusioned with Russia’s war in Ukraine and the “other crimes carried out by his command, including extrajudicial executions, beatings and extortion” against both civilians and soldiers.

‘I didn’t want to die for Putin’

“I wanted to serve in the army, I gave an oath to protect my motherland. My motherland is there [in Russia] and no one attacked it… I didn’t want to die for Putin,” he said, explaining that he contacted FRL early this year.

A spokesman for HUR, Ukrainian military intelligence directorate, claimed that Silver had provided “valuable intelligence” on Russian military positions and offensive plans over several months.

A commander in the FRL, whose call sign is Caesar, told The Telegraph: “This operation shows the people of Russia that resistance can be successful, that motivated, clever, brave people can work to overthrow Putin’s regime.”

Caesar added that Silver has now become a FRL recruit “and very soon he will join us on the front line to fight Putin’s forces and defend Ukraine”.

The defection marks a fresh political coup for Ukraine’s intelligence forces, which have been focused on luring disgruntled Russian soldiers to their cause as part of their “I Want To Live project”.

The most high-profile case so far was when Maxim Kuzminov, a Russian pilot, flew his Mi8 attack helicopter to Ukraine in the summer of 2023. In February, his body was found riddled with bullets in a car park in Alicante province, Spain.

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North Korean soldier defects to South

A North Korean soldier made a rare defection across the treacherous border zone into the South early on Tuesday, according to Seoul’s defence ministry.

The staff sergeant escaped to the northeastern county of Goseong in the Gangwon province, reported the Yonhap news agency.

He was taken into custody for questioning by South Korean guards who had been monitoring his movements. No further details have been released about his escape methods or motivation.

The defection followed another successful attempt by a North Korean citizen earlier this month on the west coast.

Escapes directly from North to South are infrequent due to the high risks of increased surveillance, landmines and a shoot-to-kill order on the northern side of the border.

In 2017, border guard Oh Chong Song made global headlines when he was shot five times during a desperate dash for freedom across the highly fortified demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating the two countries. He survived and now lives in the South.

“In their situation I would have fired the gun. It’s not a matter of friendship,” he later told NBC News about his comrades who shot him, saying he would have done the same thing in their shoes.

In 2020, a civilian defector and former gymnast stunned the South Korean authorities by reportedly running unscathed across the 2.5-mile-wide border zone, evading barricades, sentry posts, mines and vaulting a three-metre fence without triggering sensors. Two years later, it was reported he had made the perilous journey back and his fate is unknown.

Most escapees make their way to freedom through China, Russia and other third countries before seeking asylum in South Korea, although routes have become increasingly dangerous due to criminal gangs and a harsh crackdown by the Chinese authorities.

Beijing has been internationally criticised over the past two years for forcibly repatriating hundreds of North Koreans to the reclusive regime, where they are at risk of torture, imprisonment or even execution.

More than 1,000 North Koreans used to resettle in the South annually, but that number has dwindled to the low hundreds since 2020 due to extreme border closures during the Covid-19 pandemic and fortified surveillance and border posts.

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