War correspondent resigns from Russian state news agency TASS after criticizing Putin’s ‘mad’ leadership for sending troops to ‘slaughter’ in Ukraine
- Russian war correspondent who served in Syria resigned from his media
- Gleb Irisov, 31, said he heard the horrors of the death of his former colleagues in Ukraine
- “The leadership became so insane that they just left their army to be slaughtered,” he said, adding that the middle and lower army ranks were against the war.
- Other journalists from the state news agency TASS signed a petition against the war, leading the FSB to brand Russian journalists as “traitors”.
Gleb Irisov, a military correspondent for the Russian state news agency TASS, who retired due to the war with Ukraine.
A military correspondent for the Russian state-run TASS news agency has been scathingly critical of Vladimir Putin’s “insane” leadership for sending its soldiers “to slaughter” in Ukraine.
Gleb Irisov, 31, has quit and says many of his former colleagues opposed the war, leading to action by the FSB security service.
According to him, a former army military translator who served in Syria realized the full horror of the invasion on the first day, when some of his old comrades had already died.
“I learned that the situation was just horrendous,” he said.
“The leadership is so mad that they just left their own army to be slaughtered.
“Officers, contract [soldiers]conscripts.
According to him, the official denials that the conscripts served in the war are not true.
“Putin and [defence minister Sergei] Shoigu threw their ill-prepared, ill-equipped army to the slaughter… in a full-blown military conflict in Europe.”
He said that the middle and lower ranks were against the war.
Gleb Irisov is a war correspondent who previously served in Syria but quit after learning what his former comrades in Ukraine had endured. He faces charges of treason for leaving
According to him, the middle and lower ranks of the Russian armed forces are against the war, and the army suffers from sycophancy, corruption and theft.
He spoke amid estimates that Russia’s war dead now number in the tens of thousands.
According to him, his own army experience showed “widespread sycophancy, corruption and theft”.
Under Shoigu, corruption has turned from a local phenomenon into a global one.
– It starts from the very bottom: at the level of the brigade, part – when the commander steals millions of bonuses from the budget.
He reported that TASS journalists signed an extraordinary petition against the war, which led to the intervention of the FSB, and critics were branded as “traitors”.
But many employees have been brainwashed, he said.
He claimed that Russians were being told “bullshit” on TV about the war.
His choice was to remain at TASS as part of the propaganda machine or face charges of betrayal for opposing the Kremlin.
“Becoming a war criminal or against the state was an obvious choice for me,” he said.
A leading television presenter who quit last week’s NTV channel, owned by Gazprom Media, said many journalists who spread Putin’s propaganda do not agree with the war.
“Most of them have absolutely no sympathy for what is happening now – it’s all hell, horror,” says 45-year-old Lilia Gildeeva, who went into exile with her daughter.
Lilia Gildeeva from the NTV Gazprom-Media channel fled with her daughter to emigrate
She said her choice was to side with the war criminals or stand against the state, risking her life and her daughter’s livelihood.
Of the war, she said, “Every morning I wake up thinking this can’t be true.
“It’s still some kind of delayed effect of the injury, because this shock gets deeper and deeper.”
When asked what she would say to Ukrainian mothers for the pain caused by the war, she replied: “Of course, I would say:” Forgive us.
But that won’t save anyone.
“Everything that happened is forever.
“This will affect not only us, but also our children and grandchildren.”