Russia Celebrated Him As A Hero But Now Accuses Him of Having Troops Shoot Themselves
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| A recruitment poster in Moscow last year. The military has struggled to root out endemic corruption.Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times |
Valerie Hopkins and
Valerie Hopkins reported from Berlin, and Ksenia Churmanova from London. New York Times
The lieutenant colonel, call sign Executioner, was celebrated in Russian propaganda. He had four Orders of Courage pinned to his chest. In a video shared by the Ministry of Defense, he expressed a defiant wish not to rest from battle until Russia’s “victory” in Ukraine. He bragged about shrapnel wounds from what he said had been a close call.
It was all a fraud, according to the Investigative Committee, Russia’s equivalent of the F.B.I. The wounds that Executioner, whose real name is Konstantin Frolov, described in a propaganda video were not suffered in combat, according to the committee. It accused him and another commander from his elite unit, the 83rd Guards Air Assault Brigade, of leading a scheme in which more than 30 soldiers and medics used weapons to shoot themselves in order to obtain payouts for battlefield injuries.
The army was defrauded of 200 million rubles, or $2.6 million, in the plot, with the commanders taking a cut, the committee said.
Colonel Frolov, who faces charges of fraud, bribery and weapons trafficking in a military court, struck a pretrial deal that amounts to admitting guilt, according to court filings. Such agreements can lead to reduced prison sentences in Russia. Colonel Frolov is scheduled to appear in military court next month in the sentencing phase of his trial.
In a telephone interview with The New York Times last year from a pretrial detention center in Moscow, Colonel Frolov did not deny that he had been involved in a scheme to skim money from payments for battlefield injuries. But he offered a different account of the scheme, saying it had involved manipulated record-keeping, not self-inflicted wounds.
He said he believed that he was being singled out for prosecution, while others in the military had been absolved of crimes. “It turns out that my country, which spent the whole year calling me a hero, is now contradicting itself and keeping me in a cage,” he said in the courtroom in August 2024.
The case has fed public resentment of the economic and social privileges pouring into a military whose soldiers fighting in Ukraine are seen by many Russians as in it only for the money. It also shows that the Russian Army is struggling to stamp out endemic corruption.
The 83rd Guards Air Assault Brigade, Colonel Frolov’s unit, is based in the Russian Far East near Vladivostok, more than 4,000 miles from the front lines in Ukraine. A former commander of the brigade, Col. Artem Gorodilov, who was arrested shortly after Colonel Frolov in 2024 and accused of “large-scale fraud,” is being tried separately.
Two years before, Colonel Gorodilov had commanded the 234th Guards Air Assault Regiment, which Ukrainian prosecutors have accused of at least 40 war crimes during the monthlong occupation of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv.
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A muddy street is strewed with debris and damaged military vehicles. People in camouflage stand on the vehicles.
Ukrainian soldiers salvaging parts from a Russian armored vehicle after the occupation of Bucha in 2022.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
Colonel Gorodilov’s wife and his lawyer declined to comment when approached by The New York Times.
In November 2024, President Vladimir V. Putin signed a decree that soldiers would be compensated 3 million rubles, or about $39,000, for severe injuries and 1 million rubles for injuries considered minor.
Colonel Frolov, in the interview last year, said soldiers in his unit who suffered multiple wounds in single attacks had falsely claimed that the injuries took place in separate incidents, which entitled them to more than one payment. He said he did not consider this to be fraud.
He asserted that his own injuries had been sustained on the battlefield and were not self-inflicted, as the committee has said. Addressing the weapons trafficking charges, he acknowledged that he had taken some weapons as “souvenirs.”
Colonel Frolov said that a driver for a higher-ranking officer had testified against him and Colonel Gorodilov under pressure, after being threatened with criminal conviction for transporting drugs to the front lines. Colonel Frolov also said that his arrest was retribution for a video he had recorded accusing a former Ministry of Defense official of incompetent leadership and forcing troops into mass-casualty missions known as “meat grinder” assaults.
“They want to pin everything on us because we spoke out against the command, against those old men in charge,” he said.
He said that he was being targeted to pressure his father, Oleg Frolov, a former senior official responsible for military armament at Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos. The father also faces official accusations of corruption.
Colonel Frolov’s claims could not be independently verified.
One paratrooper who served under Colonel Frolov and Colonel Gorodilov said it was common practice in the brigade for commanders to encourage soldiers to exaggerate injuries, though he said he was not aware of soldiers’ shooting themselves. The troops would give part of their injury payments to the higher-ups, he said.
The paratrooper, Daniil, said that commanders had also demanded money from soldiers in exchange for benefits like time off. Like other soldiers, he agreed to speak to The Times only if his surname was withheld, for fear of retribution.
“If you want a vacation, you need to be injured. The idea was: ‘We injure you, you give us the money — a million — and then you go on leave as a result of the injury and end up with two million.’ That’s how they made money on it.” One million rubles — the cut for commanders, Daniil said — is about $13,000.
Another paratrooper in their brigade, Vladimir, said that in the Russian military, “money still determines everything.” He added that the war had become a big business for some.
Pavel Luzin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said the Kremlin tried to keep what he called a “demoralized and decayed officer corps” under relative control. Mr. Luzin said officials used a carrot and stick approach in which some commanders are allowed to profit but others will be “punished from time to time.”
With Russia’s wartime expenditures ballooning and corruption hurting its performance on the battlefield, security agencies have to look for ways to send a signal that graft will be punished, said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
At least 12 high-ranking Russian military officials and generals, as well as dozens of lower-ranking officers, have been indicted on corruption charges in the past couple of years.
“When people profit from tragedy — from a war that is sacred to Putin — it generates political fuel for other actors, including security officials seeking career advancement and those willing to push such cases forward,” Ms. Stanovaya said.
Throughout the war, as Russian propaganda portrayed him as a battlefield hero, Colonel Frolov appeared on his wife’s social media feed vacationing and partying.
In 2022, he attended two weddings in St. Petersburg and went boating on the Gulf of Finland with his wife, according to images she posted on social media. In 2023, he attended a concert in St. Petersburg with a V.I.P. badge draped around his neck. In 2024, he attended a party celebrating his 37th birthday, captured in an Instagram reel. He also made trips to the mountainous Altai region and to Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, according to stories his wife shared on social media.
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| Konstantin Frolov on a water scooter in the Gulf of Finland with his wife, who posted this picture on her social media feed in 2022.via Social Media |
Two people sitting on a water scooter with a bridge and boats in the background.
Konstantin Frolov on a water scooter in the Gulf of Finland with his wife, who posted this picture on her social media feed in 2022.Credit...via Social Media
She did not respond to requests for comment from The Times.
In the interview last year, Colonel Frolov said he believed that he and his co-defendants were being held to a double standard at a time when Russia was pardoning people accused or convicted of crimes if they went to the front lines.
“I mostly had convicts under my command,” he said. “People are forgiven for almost anything — to make them go to fight in the war. But we were brought back from the front and sent to prison.”
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