Contract, Escape, Manhunt, and a Corpse. How the Military Spent Nearly a Year Persecuting the Family of a Severely Ill Deserter in the Voronezh Region

Contract, escape, manhunt, and a corpse. How the military spent nearly a year persecuting the family of a severely ill deserter in the Voronezh region

Wanted notices for Viktor Ryasnyansky, a 22-year-old guy in glasses, were posted all over the region when Verstka’s editors began following this story a year ago.

A soldier who had never seen combat fled from a rear unit and ended up on the federal wanted list. He has poor eyesight and motor impairments, he has a severe stutter and shakes from stress. For almost a year, around ten cars tailed Viktor’s entire family, lying in wait at different addresses for his mother, father, grandmother, sister, and even the deserter’s 12-year-old niece.

“I say: we are being followed, literally. Our whole family, everywhere and all the time. And they just patted me on the shoulder like this and said: ‘Come on, woman, who needs you?’” recalls the soldier’s mother, Galina Ryasnyanskaya.

The surveillance of the Ryasnyanskys ends with the father’s funeral after he drowns in a river under strange circumstances. Viktor returns and surrenders to the unit, and he is sent “to the zone of the special military operation.”

Verstka spoke with the deserter and his family, with military personnel involved in the “surveillance,” and with other witnesses to this story.

Read on Verstka’s website (with VPN) about how a family from the small town of Liski, a commuter-train conductor, a driver, and a student livestock specialist, ended up at the center of dramatic and not always explicable events:

Link not working? Read here.

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Contract, escape, manhunt, and a corpse. How the military spent nearly a year persecuting the family of a severely ill deserter in the Voronezh region

How the search for deserters works in Russia