Artur Gasparyan, a 24-year-old native of Spitak, Armenia, was recruited in Moscow in May to fight in eastern Ukraine. Now back in the Russian capital, he spoke with Mumin Shakirov (see original in Russian here) in detail about his experiences.
You expressed interest in going to Ukraine on a forum on [the social network] Vkontakte after you read about the fire in the Odessa Trade Union Building, in which 42 pro-Moscow separatists died. What happened next?
About 10 guys showed up at a meeting somewhere near VDNKh [the All-Russian Exhibition Center in northern Moscow]. We spoke in the entrance arch of a residential building there. A Slavic man in civilian clothes who didn't give his name met with us.
First, he asked us whether we knew how to handle weapons. He warned us that we would be going to [the eastern Ukrainian city of] Slovyansk, that we were heading to certain death, that the punishment for looting was execution on the spot—which, by the way, I saw was true several times while I was in Ukraine. Two men immediately walked away.
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