Russian soldier defects, tells CBS News he and his comrades were “lied to,” and soon realized Ukraine “war was wrong”

Kyiv — Six months into his war on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling for his nation to build a bigger army. He has ordered an increase of 137,000 troops, starting in January.

But if CBS News correspondent Debora Patta’s rare, candid conversation with a Russian paratrooper is anything to go by, Putin’s plans may come up against a growing sense of resentment among the young men sent across Russia’s border to wage the leader’s war in Ukraine.

Paratrooper Pavel Filatyev told Patta that he was so disgusted with the war that he defected and decided to tell his story — despite it putting him at great personal risk. His account is all the more remarkable as he’s the first Russian soldier to break ranks and publish an inside account of what it’s like to fight in Putin’s war.

As missiles rained down on Ukraine in the early hours of February 24, it became impossible to ignore that Vladimir Putin had planned something truly awful. Astoundingly, many Russian soldiers on the front lines had no idea they had just invaded Ukraine. They hadn’t even been told what to do.

“We just started moving forward,” Filatyev told CBS News. “When the shelling began, we thought it was NATO approaching us, not Ukraine.”  

He told Patta that he served in Russia’s 56th air assault regiment, which was sent across the border to capture the southern region of Kherson early in the conflict.

“It was only 10 days later when I realized, there is no NATO here, it’s only Ukrainians,” he said.

Patta asked the Russian soldier if he felt deceived.

“I know that we have been tricked for many years, and everything shown on [Russian] state TV has nothing to do with reality,” he said. “Every person in Russia knows this. We have been lied to for many years and, unfortunately, now the same thing is happening in the war.”

Filatyev provided documents that appear to verify his credentials and support his claim to have…