Nikita Chibrin, 27, said he spent more than four months in Ukraine as part of the 64th separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade, a unit accused of committing war crimes in the Kiev region in March. Cibrin landed in the Spanish capital on Tuesday and was being held at the airport’s immigration center. In a telephone interview from the airport Wednesday afternoon, Chibrin denied involvement in his unit’s reported war crimes, saying he did not fire “one shot” while in Ukraine. He said he was willing to testify in an international court about his experiences in Ukraine. “I have nothing to hide,” he said. “This is a criminal war started by Russia. I want to do everything I can to stop it.” Chibrin said he decided to leave Russia after leaving his unit in Ukraine in June. According to Chibrin, he told his commanders of his opposition to the war on February 24, the first day of the invasion. Chibrin says he was stripped of his rank as an army engineer after speaking out and then assigned to manual labor. “They threatened to imprison me. In the end, my commanders decided to use me as a cleaner and loader. I was away from the battlefield,” he said of his time in Ukraine. The Guardian was unable to independently verify all the details of Chibrin’s story. Tsybrin provided documents and photos showing he was in the 64th separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade in Ukraine. Maxim Grebenyuk, a lawyer who runs the Moscow-based defense organization Military Ombudsman, said Tsybrin contacted him over the summer. Grebenyuk said Chybrin spoke of his opposition to what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” and his desire not to fight in Ukraine. Tsybrin is the second known Russian serviceman to have fled the country after taking part in the invasion. In August, the Guardian interviewed Pavel Filatyev, a former Russian paratrooper who fled the country after writing a memoir critical of the war. Born in Yakutsk, eastern Siberia, Tsybrin joined the Russian army in the summer of 2021. “I didn’t think I would get involved in any war,” he said, citing financial difficulties as the reason behind his decision to join the army. Chybrin said he first entered Ukraine with his unit on February 24, crossing the border into Belarus. “We had no idea we would be fighting in Ukraine,” he said. “Everybody fooled us.” According to Chibrin, he spent the first month of the invasion in the village of Lypivka, 30 miles west of Kiev. During that period, Tsybrin’s brigade is accused of executing civilians in Bukha and Andreevka, two villages near Lipivka. Russian investigative website iStories previously published a confession from a soldier who was part of Chibrin’s unit, who admitted on camera to shooting and killing a civilian in the Ukrainian town of Andriivka, less than five miles from Lypivka. After Ukrainian officials identified the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade as the unit that had captured Bukha, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded it the honorary title of “guards” and praised the unit for its “great heroism and courage.” Chibrin claimed he saw no gunfire during his time in Lypivka, but said his unit would regularly loot Ukrainian homes. “They looted everything there was. Washing machines, electronics, everything,” he said. He added that there were “widespread rumours” among his comrades that members of his unit were involved in sexual violence and the killing of civilians. The UN has previously stated that Russia has used rape and sexual violence as part of its “military strategy” in Ukraine. Russian troops were forced to retreat from the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital in March. Tsybrin said his unit was sent to Bukhaivka, a city in the country’s northeastern Kharkiv region. He described morale in his unit throughout his time in Ukraine as “extremely low,” confirming extensive media reports that portrayed the Russian military as one plagued by morale problems. “Everyone tried to find ways to get out of the army. But our commanders would threaten to shoot us if we quit.” He said that on June 16 he managed to escape from Ukraine hiding in a truck bound for Russia to pick up food supplies. After some time, he contacted the human rights network Gulagu.net, which helped Chibrin leave Russia earlier this month. Vladimir Osechkin, head of Gulagu.net, confirmed that his organization helped Chibrin flee Russia. Tsybrin said he hoped to receive political asylum in Spain, citing his public opposition to the war as a health risk if sent back to Russia. On Thursday evening, Cibrin was released from the immigration center at the airport in Madrid. He said he would be placed in a temporary refugee shelter in the Spanish capital as authorities processed his asylum application. A spokesman for Spain’s interior ministry declined to comment on the case, citing international protection rules and the risk of possible prosecution of the applicants. Additional reporting by Sam Jones in Madrid
