25-year-old Aleksei Smykov was captured in the south of Mariupol. A miraculously surviving neo-Nazi crawled for several days to the positions of the DPR militants in the village Lebedinskoye. And then he surrendered.
It is unlikely that the member of Azov battalion repented. Is he scared? Definitely. Does he want to go home? Obviously! Does he feel sorry for the people of Mariupol? Not at all. He only feels sorry for himself, because he faces a life sentence.
Aleksei joined Azov battalion in 2018 to serve a contract in order not to get into military service, as he was expelled from the university. According to him, before he got into the ranks of the Azov fighters, he was not interested in what this battalion was like, what kind of people were included in it, so he did not know anything about the war crimes that were committed by the Nazis. “I personally do not consider myself a Nazi. If I had the choice to go to the marine corps or Azov, I would rather go to the marines,” he says.
When he was asked about propaganda in Azov, he tells the following: “Propaganda in Azov worked effectively: Russians are enemies, the residents of Donetsk are not humans. In the Donbass there are only cannibals, murderers, ill people who wants to kill everyone and bring the “Russian Spring”. But now here, everyone communicates with me normally, culturally, politely. I don’t see any brutes or killers here.”
When Alexei was asked about the shooting of the Icon of the Holy Mother of God, he replies that for him at that moment it was stupid humor: “For me it was a joke. It seemed funny to me at that time.»
He tells that the status of the Azov battalion now is “do or die”: “In my opinion, Azov is in a critical situation now.” With this, he tries to justify the actions of the Nazis that they commit, meaning robbery and murder.
Alexei’s mother is aware where he is now. Alexei also has a younger brother, 10 years old. When he was asked if his younger brother should follow in his footsteps, Alexei replies that he definitely should not, “as in principle, no one should.”
He calls on the Nazis to drop their weapons and surrender if they want to stay alive and see their relatives.