Alexandr Popov
Alexandr Popov - 45 years old, native of Vladivostok. A professional OCC soldier – he has been serving for twelve years in the 155th Guards Marine Brigade of the Pacific Fleet. In his free time, he is an avid Spartak fan (although in Vladivostok he doesn't really say it out loud), follows the Russian league and European cups, and occasionally plays with the guys on the beach by the sea. He enjoys reading – mainly military history, Solzhenitsyn, and sometimes modern thrillers by Marinina. With his wife Alya, he has two children – a ten-year-old daughter Masha and a seven-year-old son Artyom, who mainly send him drawings from the field featuring ships, tanks, and dad in uniform.
Why Are We Even Dying Here?
February 18, 2026
My name is Alexander Popov, I’m 46 years old and I come from Perm. Before the war I worked as a car mechanic in a small workshop on the edge of the city. I had a girlfriend, an old Lada that I fixed myself, and plans to open my own garage one day. Then February 2022 came and suddenly I was defending Russia from Nazis. I signed a contract. I believed it. Back then I really believed it.Now I don’t believe anything anymore.I’ve been sitting in a trench near Vuhledar for eight months and all I see is senselessness. The commanders tell us: Attack, the captured villages are strategic! Strategic for what? So that the next day a Ukrainian drone can tear us to pieces? They once sent us on a reconnaissance in force — thirty guys, no support, no artillery, just “go forward. Seven came back out of thirty. The rest are lying in the field and no one even came to pick them up. Losses are acceptable, the major said over the radio. Acceptable to whom? To him in his warm hut thirty kilometers back? I’ve seen things that won’t let me sleep. In one village we liberated, our guys looted houses, raped two women and then shot them so there would be no witnesses. The commander knew. He just waved it off: War is war. This isn’t war. This is atrocity. We came to protect Russian-speaking people and instead we killed their sons, burned their houses and stole their last chickens. How can this be beration? Every day boys who should be alive are dying. Dima from my unit had two small children. He died because someone higher up wanted to look good in the report. Serjozha from Buryatia — twenty years old, never saw the sea — is now lying in a mass grave because we ran out of ammunition and command said “hold the positions.” What position? A piece of mud that nobody cares about? This war makes no sense. NATO expanded because of us, Ukraine will hate us forever, Russia has lost tens of thousands of its best boys and the economy is in ruins. And we’re still dying here for denazification, which no one can even explain properly. Denazification? Have I seen Nazis? All I’ve seen are ordinary people who just wanted to live in their own country.If I ever make it back (if I make it back), I’ll tell my future children the truth: War is not heroism. War is stupidity, greed and crime. It’s a machine that devours young boys and returns only coffins and widows.I don’t want to be a hero. I want to be alive. I want to go home.Alexander Popov somewhere near Vuhledar, February 2026.