Leonid is 52 years old and has a life full of challenges. He was born in the Republic of Moldova and, like many others, was forced by circumstances to go abroad to work. After working for years in Russia, and later trying to earn his living in the European Union, from where he was deported, he returned to what he knew best: work in the construction sector in Russia. Although he knew about the war in Ukraine, no one told him that the danger was much closer than he imagined.
After two weeks of work on a building site, one morning, at four o'clock, Leonid woke up to go to work. On the way, he was stopped by the traffic police.
It seemed like a routine check, but the police confiscated his documents and took him to a room, without providing explanations. On that day, his destiny was to take an unexpected turn.
When he was taken, as he says, before FSB agents, they interrogated him for four hours. They forced him to sign a series of documents.
"If you don't sign now, we'll force you. We will charge you with espionage and you will be sent to prison. Anyway, from there you will end up at war," those who decided his fate told him dryly, without asking him.
In less than a day, they made all the necessary papers for him: Russian passport, bank card and the documents that enlisted him in a group of Wagner mercenaries.
Leonid was not alone. In that camp, there were hundreds of people from all corners of the former Soviet space, all recruited without their will.
They were promised fabulous sums: an advance of 2 million and 100,000 rubles, followed by a monthly salary of 210,000 rubles.
But the atmosphere was far from reassuring. It was clear that those people were not there willingly, but were trapped in a machine from which there seemed to be no escape.
After a few days of forced training, Leonid was summoned to the office of the one who seemed to be the head of that military camp. Leonid still doesn't understand why, but he was given a three-week break.
"You can go home to say goodbye to your family, but if you don't come back, we will find you wherever you hide," those from the FSB told him. The threat was clear, and no one doubted that they would keep their promise.
The man returned to Moldova through Armenia, using the money he had received for plane tickets.
In the last days before the deadline by which he was to return to Russia, he made a difficult decision: he decided that he would not return. He made this choice right at the airport, at the last moment, so great was the fear.
"I don't want to go to war. Those who get there are not soldiers; they are cannon fodder," Leonid tells himself, realizing what fate he would have had if he had succumbed to the pressure.
Since then, his life has been a continuous run. He changed all his phone numbers, trying to disappear from the radar of those who followed him.
The man says that he lives near the Transnistrian region, and the man who recruited him was an influential figure in Russian military circles, being originally from Transnistria. The fear of being found never left him.
Even though he managed to avoid war, its shadows continue to haunt him. Moldovans like him, who end up getting caught up in this power game, are more and more numerous. He saw them, managed to get to know them and understood that stories like his are just the beginning of a long series of tragedies that reveal the true face of the war waged by the Russian Federation on neighboring Ukraine.
Author: Denis Dermenji