Pavel Filatyev

Pavel Olegovich Filatyev (On rare occasions, his last name Филатьев is transliterated as Filatiev.) ) is a former soldier (senior sergeant) of the Russian Army's paratroopers during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. which caused a major stir on Russian internet. Filatyev was part of the initial ground invasion in the first two months of the war. He was injured and sent back to Russia for recuperation, during which time (45 days) he wrote his memoir, called "ZOV 56" after the tactical symbol displayed on Russian vehicles during the invasion.

Having faced prosecution in Russia, he fled the country, passing through several destinations. He was arrested in Tunisia, where the authorities thought he was a spy. After Tunisia, he decided to go to France where he asked for political asylum.

Biography Youth and career Pavel Filatyev was born on August 2nd, 1988 in Volgograd Oblast into a military family. He served in the Russian Army in Chechnya in the late 2000s.

Account of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Run-up to invasion and first days Filatyev served as a paratrooper in the 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment, which before the February 2022 invasion was based in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that was unilaterally annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014. He said that although rumours began to spread that the soldiers could "storm" Kherson, he initially dismissed such talk as nonsense.

In early April, a shell blasted mud into his eye that caused an infection. while he was still living in Russia.

The French Le Monde described the book as "141 pages of anger".

The Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung called the book a "terrible story of experience".

Pavel transferred all his profits from the book sales to two non-profit foundations promoting democracy and civil rights in Russia.

Life in exile For the next two weeks, Filatyev tried to stay in Russia as he felt 'the country needed him', while moving from hotel to hotel in Moscow to evade police arrest. One of his first acts upon arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport was delivering an online speech criticizing Russian president Vladimir Putin, and ripping up his Russian passport and flushing it down an airport toilet. By then, he had been 'greeted as a hero by some in the West', but become 'a scourge and a traitor in his native Russia, at least among proponents of the war who know of his existence, as opponents of the invasion are aggressively censored.'