MIKHAIL METZEL
Nearly nine months into Russia’s war against Ukraine, it seems some of Vladimir Putin’s strongmen are laying the groundwork to abandon ship.
A human rights group that works closely with Russian inmates and investigates abuses by the security services has reportedly received a flood of calls from members of those same security services desperately trying to flee.
Gulagu.net, founded by Vladimir Osechkin, reports that the final straw appears to have been the brutal sledgehammer-execution video released by Russia’s private army last week—a stomach-churning extrajudicial killing that the Kremlin politely averted its eyes from while the Putin-linked businessman thought to be behind uses it for his own PR campaign.