Deserters never enjoy a good press. During the Second World War it is estimated that there were about one hundred thousand. The films of the time portray them as cowards and selfish. There are deserters in all wars, but especially in those of aggression.
In the Vietnam War, between July 1966 and the end of 1973, five hundred thousand American boys refused to enlist and emigrated to Canada. Sweden has a long tradition of welcoming deserters from conflicts from all latitudes.
There is also talk of deserting soldiers among the Russians sent to fight in Ukraine. A quarter of them are recruits, many are very young, ill-equipped, untrained, subjected to cruel treatment by their older comrades.
With a lengthy journalistic investigation, the New York Times verified and analyzed the recordings of conversations between Russian soldiers in Ukraine. The voices that are heard are those of men in distress and fear. One of them asks for “makeshift solutions” and a Ukrainian who enters via radio yells at him: “Go home! Better to be a deserter than fertilizer “.
It is difficult to quantify the number of Russian soldiers who defect: the Russian sources downplay, the Ukrainian ones exaggerate.
In the Scavo, of the newspaper Avvenire, he managed to get in touch with the families of some of them, after weeks of research: “The cases of desertion are multiplying, while many contract soldiers have resigned,” writes Scavo. A soldier tells him: “We were in Belarus, we were told it was an exercise like any other. They lied. I used to come to Ukraine on vacation, to visit relatives, now they ask me to kill them “.
“I am not here, dear president, to kill people more or less like me”, sang Boris Vian in Deserter, song translated into Italian by Giorgio Calabrese: “So if you need blood at any cost, go and give yours if it will amuse you, and tell your people, if they come looking for me, that they can shoot me, I don’t have any weapons” . ◆