Russian Drone Defector Reveals Two Armies Inside Russia

(KYIV) – A senior Russian drone operator from an elite unit has defected to Ukraine, providing a rare insight into the Kremlin’s recruitment methods and the internal dissent festering within its forces as the invasion continues to stall.

The defector, identified as 24-year-old Mirislav Simonov, originally worked as a real estate agent in Novosibirsk, roughly 2,000 miles from the Ukrainian border. His journey from a coerced recruit to a fugitive crossing a corpse-filled trench under fire reveals the deepening contradictions in Russia’s war effort, where Moscow is losing incredible amounts of troops whilst making no significant battlefield gains.

Simonov’s story, detailed by Times correspondent Maxim Tucker on Frontline, begins with his arrival in Moscow for a vocational course. He had not completed the obligatory one-year national service. Russian authorities arrested him on that basis and applied immediate pressure. He said he was told he could either be sent to the front or sign a voluntary contract for an easier duty near his father, who was already serving as a chef in a logistics unit. He signed the contract against his will.

Instead of joining his father, Simonov was dispatched to a patriotic education and military training camp, part of a network established by the Russian dictator to militarise youth. He was then sent to a training centre where he described conditions as absolutely awful, with unsanitary filth, no running water, and men vomiting everywhere from illness. He told Tucker that the recruits divided into two groups: condemned men who spoke of being sent to their death, and patriotic dogs who were simply obedient.

In 2024, Simonov was recruited into the Rubicon Centre, an advanced drone warfare unit credited with helping to halt Ukraine’s Kursk offensive through mid-range strike drone operations. The unit sought educated, freethinking individuals. Simonov passed rigorous examinations on aircraft systems, camera changes, and engineering tasks. Conditions in Rubicon were markedly different. Operators lived in a hotel, were well fed, and were looked after, a privileged treatment Moscow uses to retain its serious specialists.

It was in this elite unit that Simonov’s disillusionment crystallised. He took part in reconnaissance for a strike that hit a civilian residential area, wounding a 20-year-old woman and other civilians. He said he did not know if the civilians were deliberately targeted or if the unit simply did not care that they struck the wrong building. In the aftermath, the unit’s commander made off-colour jokes about the incident on their WhatsApp group, stating the operator responsible would now not be welcome in Ukraine. There was no investigation and no consequences.

Simonov deserted and fled back to Russia, deleting his social media and operating under an assumed name while planning an escape to Kazakhstan. Following the death of his grandmother from stage four cancer, he was arrested again. Russian authorities told him they understood that these terrible things happened in war, but urged him not to tell anyone about it, seeking to suppress the information.

He was then sent back to the front line and placed in an assault unit, a reassignment he interpreted as a death sentence. He said his anger crystallised into a desire for revenge and punishment of those who had put him in that position.

Simonov contacted Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project, operated by military intelligence, which provides a surrender pathway for Russian servicemen. Ukrainian handlers gave him code words to communicate in front of his fellow soldiers and planned a safe corridor across the front line. He waited three weeks before making his escape on foot in thick fog, walking 10 kilometres while dodging Russian sentries and concealing himself from drones. He crossed a 4-metre-wide trench filled with Russian bodies. Within a few hundred metres of Ukrainian positions, a Russian drone spotted him and dropped a grenade. Shrapnel tore into his leg and arm, but he made it to the position where Ukrainian troops dressed his wounds, fed him, and let him sleep before moving him to the rear.

Ukrainian authorities say around 400 Russian troops have passed through the “I Want to Live” project, though not all are defectors. The most famous cases, including a helicopter pilot who landed his aircraft in Ukraine, have become priority targets for Kremlin hit squads. That pilot was later tracked down and killed in Spain.

Simonov is now in Ukrainian custody, being trained to operate drones for the Freedom of Russia Legion, a unit within Ukraine’s military intelligence. Tucker reports that the intelligence coup is significant, as Simonov’s detailed knowledge of Rubicon’s training methods, incentives, and operational tactics helps explain recent Ukrainian improvements in jamming and countering mid-range drone strikes. Part of that improvement also stems from Starlink being disabled for Russian troops.

Tucker noted that Simonov’s defection is remarkable not only for the physical bravery required, but because he represents a class of recruit Moscow has largely avoided sending to war. The Russian dictator has been careful to conscript and mobilise the poorest people from far-flung regions. Simonov was a middle-class real estate agent with a promising career, a freethinker whose reaction to the violence was not to suppress his conscience but to act on it.

“I’ve had enough of being silent and forced not to say anything,” Simonov said. “I want other Russians to hear my story and decide that they take their own lives into their hands.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s deep strike programme continues to hit Russian oil refineries and arms factories deep inside Russia at an impressive scale and pace, causing the Kremlin significant problems. Russian troops remain bogged down for hundreds of days around tiny villages, unable to make meaningful gains. Tucker reports a noticeable shift in optimism on the ground, with Ukrainian drone manufacturing scaled up significantly and new munitions, including cruise missiles and a Patriot-analogue air defence system being developed with a German company, reducing reliance on American support.

The shifting dynamics have not escaped the Russian dictator, who for the first time stated the war in Ukraine might be coming to an end. His muted Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square, stripped of the usual heavy military hardware and missing many allied world leaders, underscored a growing weakness and isolation. A supposed three-day ceasefire, announced by former United States President Donald Trump, never materialised. Air raid sirens continued, drones flew, and promised prisoner exchanges were delayed, leaving families desperate for the return of service members held for years in abject Russian custody.

Domestically, Ukraine faces the complex challenge of balancing reform with wartime unity. The arrest of former presidential office head Andriy Yermak on corruption and money laundering charges touches the highest levels of government and inevitably undermines President Volodymyr Zelensky, even as European partners acknowledge that the functioning of anti-corruption institutions is a positive marker. With Russia capable of striking anywhere, credible elections remain impossible, leaving Europe with no choice but to continue backing the current leadership.

The European Union has fully realised that the defence of Europe relies on Ukraine, its standing army, its size, and its technology acting as the principal deterrent against Russian ambitions on the continent. Tucker’s upcoming interview with General Budanov, now Zelensky’s chief of staff and the first British journalist to access him in that role, is expected to shed further light on how a wartime special operations architect is transitioning into the role of peace negotiator.