From War Propaganda to Exile

In the summer of 2023, Obninsk resident Vladimir Terekhov appeared in a news report by Margarita Simonyan from a Moscow military recruitment center. He told the TV anchor that his family was patriotic and that he was going to enlist in Russia's War on Ukraine like his son, who he claimed had volunteered.

According to independent outlet Mediazona, Terekhov's story was far more complex and convoluted..

A few months before Terekhov met Simonyan at the recruitment center, he had left pretrial detention. He had spent a year in custody in a fraud case, accused of driving a courier who collected money from elderly scam victims. 

He returned home to learn that his 25-year-old son had been mobilized (he had not volunteered) while Vladimir was in jail. Before being deployed, Alexei gave his mother only his military tag number, saying he was being sent to somewhere near Kharkiv. By the time his father was released, the family had lost contact with Alexei.

After his interview with Simonyan, Terekhov signed an enlistment contract after military officials promised to help him find Alexei, and bring him home from the front. Terekhov said enlistment officers told him that, if two close relatives were serving in the war, one could be released. A lawyer with Prizyv k sovesti ("Call to Conscience") told Mediazona that no such law or regulation exists and that it was a scam.

Terekhov traveled to Moscow’s new Unified Contract Military Recruitment Center where, he said, a lieutenant colonel repeated the promise. He was first sent to train in Kamenka, in Leningrad Oblast, and later to a training ground in Luhansk Oblast. Hoping to reach his son, Vladimir trained as a tank commander and was eventually sent to the Kharkiv front.

In late August 2023, father and son finally met – Alexei was working as a cook. Both cried and recorded a video for Alexei’s grandmother. After their reunion, a battalion commander suggested Alexei sign a contract so that father and son could serve together. Terekhov said that was when he realized no one intended to send either of them home.

Despite training as a tank commander, Terekhov said he fired his tank only during exercises. With only one tank available for three crews, he was instead assigned to guard a position against drone attacks.

In March 2024, Terekhov developed a serious intestinal illness. He eventually underwent surgery, but said he never fully recovered. He returned to Obninsk, where he stayed there for a year and eight months, believing his unit had forgotten him. Then came a WhatsApp warning: return to the unit or face prosecution for desertion.

Terekhov moved out that day. The next morning, police were outside his home. Friends helped him reach Belarus, and on July 10, he flew from Minsk to Yerevan, Armenia. Two weeks later, military police visited his elderly mother. By late July, he was listed as missing.

Alexei, meanwhile, signed a new contract after three years of mobilized service and remains in the military.

On August 9, Terekhov joined other deserters outside the Russian Embassy in Yerevan for a protest. His placard read: "The organizer of all protests in Russia is Putin V.V."

"I’m now in Yerevan, at 56, without my family or my homeland," Terekhov said.