Gulagu.net suspended the military evacuation program from Russia

The founder of Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin, announced the suspension of the program for the evacuation abroad of Russian military personnel opposing the war in Ukraine. He wrote about this in his Telegram channel.

According to Osechkin, the decision to terminate the program was made after the former Russian paratrooper Pavel Filantiev confessed to activists that he was involved in war crimes. In 2022, Gulagu.net helped him leave Russia and publish the book “ZOV 56” about the war in Ukraine. At the time of the evacuation, the activists did not know about Filantiev’s involvement in extrajudicial executions.

“As the Swedish journalist Erik de la Regera found out, at the time of writing to us at the end of July 2022, his first interview with us in August and subsequent meetings with journalists in France, Pavel Filatyev knew that a number of those detained by him and his colleagues from the Air Force Ukrainians were subsequently shot and hanged, that is, killed,” wrote Osechkin.

Filantiev later told Osechkin that information about the executions was given to him by former colleagues after the book was published, so the author did not write about the crimes in the text. According to its founder, Gulagu.net does not know where Pavel Filantyev is. Osechkin clarified that the former military man had previously refused an interview with Ukrainian journalist Vladimir Zolkin, and also refused to voluntarily testify to prosecutors and investigators from Ukraine at the embassy in Paris. Filantiev requested political asylum in France, but the decision has not yet been made. Vladimir Osechkin also stated that he intends to resign from the head of the New dissidents foundation, which is engaged in evacuating citizens from Russia.

• New dissidents foundation and Gulagu.net helped former employees of security structures and military to leave Russia and obtain political asylum in Europe. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, they have helped to leave, including former military man Konstantin Efremov and former mercenary PMC “Wagner” from the Tomsk region, Andrey Medvedev.
• Pavel Filantiev participated in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as part of the Airborne Forces, but returned from the front because of an eye disease. After his return, he published the book “ZOV 56”, in which he condemned Russian aggression. In 2022, he left Russia.