The Russian Officer Secretly Working for Ukraine

It was a cold February morning in eastern Ukraine when a Russian military officer named Lev Stupnikov made one of the most dangerous decisions of his life. Stupnikov had heard that one of the units in his brigade had been gathering every morning to conduct drills ahead of a major operation they were planning to assault the nearby town of Vuklodar. Matthew Luxmore has been reporting on the war and the story of this soldier who was about to betray Russia and help Ukraine. And Stupnikov delivered this information to the Ukrainians and the Ukrainians understood that this provided them with an opportunity to strike the Russians, not just a small formation, but potentially dozens and dozens of soldiers in one single location, including high-ranking officers. For weeks, Stupnikov had secretly been talking on WhatsApp with a Ukrainian handler. Stupnikov, he sent the coordinates for this position and knew that this would be an opportunity that they didn't want to miss. This would be Stupnikov's first attempt to aid Ukraine in a full-on attack on his fellow Russian soldiers. Stupnikov told Matthew his story over hours of interviews. That morning, he walked. He tried not to arouse suspicion up to the group of soldiers who are lining up at that point on the edge of the field, preparing for the drills. And holding his smartphone close to his chest to avoid being noticed, he snaps a photo of this group of soldiers and then he sends it immediately to the Ukrainian handler. And he responds saying, OK, I need another photo, something clearer. And Stupnikov responds saying, if I take more photos, I'm going to arouse suspicion. Despite his worries, Stupnikov carefully sends another photo to the handler. And he texts Stupnikov the message in all caps with a single word saying, LEAVE. Stupnikov had already started making his way out of the strike zone. He had sidled up to a group of drivers smoking outside and he asked them for a pack of wet wipes. Essentially, failing a problem with his stomach, he runs off. At that point, with the wet wipes, he squats down in the middle of the trees, pretending to relieve himself. And within two minutes of that, he is knocked backwards by a huge explosion. And then when he gets up and he peers through the trees, he sees a gruesome sight. Bodies strewn across the edge of the field, some writhing. In pools of blood. Body parts everywhere. And his phone buzzes. He gets a message from his Ukrainian handler asking him, send a photo of the aftermath. And Stupnikov simply responds, there's just meat. How significant is this moment for Stupnikov? This is the first attack of many that he's going to carry out over the seven ensuing months that he spends, as a sort of deep cover spy behind enemy lines for the Ukrainians. By the time it was all said and done, Stupnikov's work sabotaging the Russian military would lead to the deaths of roughly 300 soldiers, some of whom he'd lived with and fought alongside for months. You know, there's an assumption since this war started that it's not just Putin's war, it's the war of Russians against Ukraine. But the Stupnikov story, and really, the broader phenomenon that it uncovers in Russia with hundreds of people helping the Ukrainian cause shows that there are so many people inside Russia who are willing to really risk arrest and their freedom, act on their principles and help Ukraine. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Friday, November 6th. Coming up on the show, the harrowing story of Lev Stupnikov. This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. In business, a wrong answer can cause. more than a slow one. That's why nine Fortune 10 companies now run on Claude for the work they want to get right. Safety and accuracy are not just line items for Anthropic. That's their whole mission. See how Claude can support your business at claude.ai slash the journal. In business, a wrong answer can cost you more than a slow one. Lev Stupnikov's path to the Russian military began early in his life in a Siberian town called Omsk. His mother, Tatyana Yanson, wanted to send her son to a good school, and one of the best schools in the town was a boarding school for military cadets. So he became steeped in these ideals of military service. He was taught by veterans of Russia's wars in Chechnya and Afghanistan. And then when he turned 16 and graduated from this boarding school, he decided to join a military academy. His mother was opposed to this. She didn't want her son to tie the rest of his life to the military. But also, this was a time of peace. Continuing his education in the military academy meant Stupnikov would be required to sign an oath to Russia and to serve as an army officer when he finished school. And his mother was there in the audience watching his son. And he was a 17-year-old son, take this oath. And she had very mixed feelings about it. But she knew that in some ways, she had placed her son on this path herself by enrolling him in the military-style boarding school in Omsk. But as Stupnikov got older, and his military schooling went on, he began to see things that bothered him. He saw that military equipment that they were training on, he quickly realized, was dilapidated old Soviet-era equipment. And he realized that the Russian military is far weaker than it says it is in all the propaganda that he had been imbibing since he was a teenager. Stupnikov also saw corruption seep into his everyday life. His fellow cadets and him had to pay bribes in order to leave the compound of this military academy in St. Petersburg to go on dates or to go to the local bar. They had to pay off the officers on duty to bring in alcohol to their dorm rooms. Stupnikov said that at one point, he even had an application to pilot school rejected because he refused to pay a bribe. All of this made him start questioning a long-term career in the military. Instead, he started thinking about de-enlisting and building a simpler civilian life. By this point, he'd married his teenage sweetheart, and they planned to have kids. He imagined what kind of other careers he could pursue. He had been an athlete throughout his early life, had won powerlifting competitions in Russia, into his training, very disciplined, doesn't smoke or drink. Stupnikov thought he'd get a job as a trainer at a local gym. But any dreams he had about a different life vanished in February of 2022. And we are coming on the air because the war in Ukraine has begun. The largest invasion of a neighboring country in Europe since World War II. The Russian military attacking from the south, the north, the east. It was unprovoked. But this is what Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed on Ukraine as the sun came up this morning. Once Putin invaded Ukraine, officers like Stupnikov no longer had the option to de-enlist, so he had no way out. Once the war began, it was impossible for Stupnikov to leave the military. And in November of 2023, a document arrived at his base. It contained a list of soldiers who were getting sent to the front line. Stupnikov's name was on it. And the document said that a certain number of officers from this military base were being sent to the war zone in Ukraine for the replenishment of losses. The replenishment of losses. Wow, that's an awfully stark way to put it. Yeah, it was no secret at the time for anyone who was watching, of course, the Russian government was denying it, and the military as well. But Russia had suffered colossal losses by that point in the war. According to Western officials. Hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties had already taken place in Ukraine. Soldiers were coming back home in body bags. And a new crop of officers was urgently needed. And so in November 2023, he arrived on the front lines in eastern Ukraine. Stupnikov had an important job there. He was head of signals for his battalion. It's a prestigious position that gave him access to critical military intelligence. But he quickly realized that while at the start of the war, the Russians heading to fight in Ukraine had been contract soldiers and officers. By the time Stupnikov arrived on the front line, his subordinates in the battalion were ex-convicts freed from prisons to fight in Ukraine, sometimes rapists and murderers who did not want to be there. Guys with no motivation whatsoever and guys who understood that they were cannon fodder. And their behavior to. So Stupnikov was appalling. Stupnikov's disillusionment deepened as he spent more time with the men. One afternoon, he watched as a group ransacked a liquor store and roughed up the owner. At Stupnikov's command post, there were sofas and large-screen televisions looted from local homes. Meanwhile, many civilians there were already struggling to even find water or heat their homes. He recalled in conversations with me one walk that he had to the edge of. village one morning. The subordinate he was walking with was a big Putin supporter. And Stupnikov said to the subordinate, how terrible must it be to live in this town as a civilian. But the soldier he was with just laughed and repeated a common line of Kremlin propaganda. They didn't want Russia to invade. Ukraine shouldn't have been clamoring to become part of Europe. Stupnikov wanted to respond and answer back, but he knew that this would be dangerous to him. Instead, he bit his tongue and simply said, yeah, I guess so. But things like this made him even more bitter towards his fellow soldiers. So back in Omsk, his mother, Tatyana Yanson, is trying to figure out ways to help him. Stupnikov's mother was terrified for him. She'd spent the years leading up to the war attending anti-Putin protests. And she felt guilty, like her desire to send him to a good school as a child, had put him on a path to die fighting a war she didn't believe in. So she started looking for a way to get him out. And towards the winter of 2024, when her son had already been on the front lines for two months, she stumbles online on the name of Dmytro Karpenko, the Ukrainian blogger, YouTuber, who had been publishing interviews of Russian POWs. Dmytro Karpenko is a Ukrainian working with the resistance. His YouTube channel, boasts more than 800,000 followers. He livestreams almost every day. Karpenko became known for his interviews with Russian prisoners of war. When you were in Kyiv, you spent some time with Karpenko. What's he like? Quite an incredible character. He's a chain smoker with a big round face, bags under his eyes, he sleeps four hours a night. As he's juggling around 40 different accounts and different messaging apps on his 10 different smartphones and his two laptops, constantly communicating with sources inside Russia who feed him information that he passes on to the Ukrainian military. Karpenko is a key player in the Defector pipeline. He says he manages more than 100 agents inside Russia who are working on behalf of Ukraine. He says he's not part of the Ukrainian military, but he does work with them. Stupnikov's mother thought that if anyone could help her son escape the war, it was Karpenko. So she reached out. And Karpenko says, if he wants to get out, he can contact me himself. And so shortly after that, Stupnikov writes to Karpenko. Stupnikov typed out a message on WhatsApp. I'm ready to work with you and to give myself up. He included his name, rank, location, and his battalion information. Then Karpenko and Stupnikov worked out a system. They would talk at the same time every week about potential targets for the Ukrainian military. They agreed on a code language in case Stupnikov was compromised. And Karpenko told them to regularly erase any record of their communications. The first test of whether Stupnikov was the real deal was that strike in the field in Ukraine, where he hid in the woods pretending he was sick. From Karpenko's perspective, the operation was a huge success. That attack was a success. The attack led to the deaths of 68 Russian soldiers. Including the commander of Stupnikov's entire brigade and many other high-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers and medics. In the ensuing months, Stupnikov and Karpenko ramped up their collaboration, sharing information about Russian military plans. And the Ukrainians start to strike those locations and take out those soldiers, killing hundreds ultimately, striking the command posts, striking expensive weapons, including signals equipment, which is very, very difficult to replace. Tanks, armored vehicles, electronic warfare systems, really inflicting major damage on the Russian army in that part of the front line. Stupnikov was proving to be a hugely valuable asset for the Ukrainians. But Stupnikov soon realizes that suspicion is growing of a plant in the brigade. Over time, as the months pass, his commanders start making more and more comments suggesting that they are aware of the fact that someone must be feeding intelligence. The coincidences are mounting. Every operation of the Russian brigade is planning as being either thwarted or is leading to the death of many, many soldiers before an attack is even able to begin. And there's one moment which really spooks Stupnikov. One morning, Stupnikov is in the command post, and there's a frustrated brigade commander sitting nearby. And the commander at one point throws his hands up, and he says, nothing we're doing is working out. We must have a Stirlitz in our ranks. And a Stirlitz for anyone who grew up in Russia is a very clear reference to a famous, celebrated, Soviet-era spy movie. The movie is about a Russian spy, Max Otto von Stirlitz, working in Nazi Germany. Feeding secrets back to Moscow. And so Stupnikov immediately understands that the commander is aware that there must be a spy in their ranks. And he looks around the room, and in Stupnikov's version, he recalls the commander looking directly at him. And Stupnikov lowers his eyes and issues a nervous laugh. But he knows that after this point, things are becoming dangerous for him. And even if they don't suspect him directly, he knows that his days are numbered. And so he starts to signal to the Ukrainians, you need to get me out. What's in it for Ukraine to get him out? The Ukrainians know that he's a high-value target, and that losing him would, at the very least, be a huge propaganda victory for the Russians who could parade this captured spy in front of the cameras and on state TV and show that they know exactly what the Ukrainians are up to. So one afternoon, Stupnikov is back in the command post coordinating communications. He gets a message from Karpenko, the Ukrainian handler. Karpenko says to him, come to the edge of the village at an appointed time later this week and leave all your weapons behind. And Stupnikov realized that the moment has come, that his exfiltration, his escape across the front lines is finally going to happen. That's next. 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For Stupnikov, making the decision to get out was a simple one. But actually doing it was a lot more complicated. After talking with Karpenko, his Ukrainian handler, they decided that the best way out would be to walk. The path would be through a minefield along the front line, in the middle of the night. The Ukrainians sent Stupnikov drone footage showing the route he would need to take. He studies this very carefully. He notes the long grass covering mines the field is overlaid with and also the husks of the destroyed armored fighting vehicles and tanks that will be obstacles along his way to the Ukrainian part of the front line. And then finally he sets off on a warm, summer night in July. It's pitch black when Stupnikov carefully steps into the minefield. Flying somewhere in the sky above is a drone the Ukrainians are using to guide him and follow his movements. And the whole time that he's walking across this minefield, the one thing he's thinking of is imagining himself in a hot bath, trying to distract his attention from this incredibly risky thing that he's doing. And finally he hears the sound of, ducks. And to him this is evidence that he's going the right way because as he knows from the drone footage that the Ukrainians have sent to him, his destination, the Ukrainian position where he's going to be received, lies on the edge of a lake. As Stupnikov follows the sound of the ducks, the Ukrainians watch his progress through the drone camera. The grainy thermal image shows a small white shape below, getting closer and closer to the front line. And so when he approaches, they see him, send out a group of armed Ukrainians to greet this Russian defector. And they walk up to Stupnikov and they say, any weapons? And he says, no. And then they say, what is the password? And the password that Stupnikov had been given had made him chuckle for days. And then he finally tells the Ukrainians what it is with a little laugh. And he says, peanut shop. The password, peanut shop, tells the Ukrainians that this is their man. They blindfold Stupnikov and put him in a pickup truck. He was driven to a secure location for interrogation and debriefing. But Stupnikov's mind was back in Russia, thinking of someone he left behind. His wife, Liza, was living back in the Russian Far East. And she didn't know about many of the things that Stupnikov, her husband, was doing for the Ukrainians. So after Stupnikov had crossed the, front lines, he made a call to Liza and asked her, come and join me. But she said no. Stupnikov was shocked. This was his childhood sweetheart, the woman that he wanted to build a family with. And he spent the following weeks in a depression, messaging his wife on numerous occasions, trying to bring her around. Eventually, Stupnikov's wife stopped responding to him altogether. Figuring out what his life would look like after defecting wasn't straightforward. Even though Stupnikov had aided Ukraine so much on the battlefield, he was considered a prisoner of war. And held behind bars. Until a unique opportunity presented itself. So he's kept in confinement for a while. But immediately he starts having the kinds of meetings that most Russians who are taken prisoner by the Ukrainians don't have. And one of those meetings in the first days of his captivity is with a burly, tall, commander who is also from Russia. This guy was named Denis Kapustin. Kapustin is the commander of a group of ethnic Russians, most of them Russian citizens with Russian passports, who are fighting for the Ukrainians against Russia. Kapustin had heard about the young defector's exploits. And he asked Stupnikov to join his militia. The Russian volunteers, the Russian volunteer corps or R.V.C. He tells him quite clearly, "Look, if you join the Russian volunteer corps, I'm giving you a unique opportunity to escape Ukrainian captivity where Stupnikov could languish for years, potentially, and to join an elite unit in the Ukrainian military fighting against the Russians that you had left behind." But Stupnikov is not sure about the offer. He doesn't know if he wants to fight for the Ukrainians. He simply wanted to leave the war effort. And so, offending Kapustin, who is used to people clamoring to join his unit, especially Russian POWs, he essentially says, "Look, I need to think about it." It now seemed that the only way to get out of prison was to go back to war. And there was something else Stupnikov had to consider about joining the R.V.C. - The Russian volunteer corps is a far-right organization, and it's not just a military unit inside the Ukrainian army. It's also a far-right political organization. - Photos of the R.V.C. show members in face coverings, wearing symbols commonly associated with Nazism and white supremacy, though there are members of the R.V.C. whose politics are far less extreme. - For Stupnikov, who is not a neo-Nazi and is actually quite liberal by most Russian standards, this is a decision he had to make. Before joining the Russian volunteer corps. - Stupnikov had wanted to return to civilian life, but he also realized he would have an enormous target on his back. He knew the story of another famous Russian defector, Maxim Kuzmenov, who was assassinated in Spain within a year of his escape. Stupnikov thought that, ironically, the safest place for him might be alongside others fighting on the front line. So he agreed to join the R.V.C. - A year later, he shared his story on Karpenko's YouTube channel, his former handler. And at only 26 years old, Stupnikov became a legend in Ukraine. His exploits have inspired other Russian soldiers to defect. Not long after Stupnikov took up arms again, he and his mother reunited. - Tatyana, for the first time in a long time, finally saw her son once again. And she noted that he had put on a little bit of weight. He had a long beard and a big mustache. In the style of other fighters of the Russian Volunteer Corps. And they started catching up. And at one point she asked him, "Look, you decided to go back and fight on the Ukrainian side, but you wanted to be away from the war. Along, you wanted to build a different life." And she said to him, "Is this really our war?" And he explained to his mother that he felt it was his duty as a Russian to do everything that he could to stop Putin and try and help topple his regime. So he responded to his mother saying, "Yes, this is our war." And shortly after that, he went back to the frontline to fight for Ukraine. - Before we go, a quick note for our listeners in Texas. This Monday, we're bringing The Journal live to Dallas. And I've got some good news. The show initially sold out, but due to popular demand, we've released a few more tickets. So grab them while you can. We'll put the link in our show notes. I'd love to see you there. That's all for today, Friday, November 6th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. The show's made by Catherine Brewer, Evelyn Fajardo-Alvarez, Pia Ghedkari, Max Green, Sophie Codner, Matt Kwong, Trina Menino, Colin McNulty, Jessica Mendoza, Imani Moise, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez-Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Katie Shepherd, Piers Singhi, Jeevika Verma, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Ryan Knudsen. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard. With help this week from Sam Baer. Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Bobby Lord, Katherine Anderson, Emma Munger, Griffin Tanner, Marcus Begala, Nathan Singapak, Peter Leonard, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking this week by Jennifer Gorin and Nicole Pasolka. Thanks for listening, see you Monday. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling, and beyond, Shopify can help. Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/specialoffer. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com. 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