The way Artyom Bykov ended up in the Russian Army’s 273rd Artillery Brigade was bad enough.
In November 2024, he says he was sitting in a Moscow region police precinct house, listening to officers threatening to plant drugs on him if he didn’t sign a contract to join the military.
In the past, Bykov had spent time in a drug rehab facility. His mother, with whom he said he fought constantly about his past drug use and about his sexual orientation, had called the police on him after a bad argument.
“I was on the hook with the police; my mother could always testify against me. I chose the lesser of two evils,” the 24-year-old said in an interview with RFE/RL. He reluctantly agreed to sign a contract, and he was sent to the brigade’s training ground.
When his superior officers found out he was bisexual, the beatings started for real, he said.
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Prior to Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, groups like the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers had spent years raising awareness of the problem and pushing lawmakers and commanders to eliminate the practice.
In August 2020, a top Defense Ministry official declared that “dedovshchina” had been “completed eradicated” from the armed forces.
Last September, President Vladimir Putin visited and inspected the 237th, along with other units.
“If Putin had known about this chaos, the brigade would have been disbanded and thrown out," Bykov said.
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In a series of interviews in March and April from Georgia, where he went after deserting the military and fleeing the country, Bykov recounted his tortured, 11-month odyssey at the 273rd brigade’s training grounds in Mulino, in the central region of Nizhny Novgorod.
Bykov also provided extensive correspondence, photographs, and audio recordings, which RFE/RL’s Russian Service and Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit, used to corroborate many of the details of his account.
Artyom Bykov said he was subjected to particularly severe abuse after his commanders learned he was bisexual.
For years, his mother was unable to accept that he was bisexual, Bykov said. He said he also had a drug habit, which he blamed on “my own repressed traumas… severe psychological problems, including an inferiority complex.”
His mother admitted him to a drug rehabilitation program, first in 2022 and then again in 2023. The following November, when he returned home, he and his mother argued and she called the police, telling them he was gay, taking drugs, making her life miserable.
Police officers took him to a local precinct house and persuaded him to unlock his mobile phone, where, he said, they discovered personal photos and videos.
They threatened to plant drugs on him if he didn’t sign a contract to join the military, he said, and they warned him that Russian prison culture treated gay or bisexual men with hostility or outright violence.
The ‘good cop, bad cop’ game began. I got scared and decided I had no choice,” Bykov said.
“It seemed more rational to me to die in the war than to go to prison, where I'd be tortured and abused to death,” he said.
He received a payment of 2 million rubles ($18,000) within 10 days of signing his contract. The sum, a huge amount of money by most Russian standards, reflects the system that Russian recruiters have devised in order to attract a steady flow of volunteers -- while avoiding another unpopular mobilization order.
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'It Seemed Like Hell'
Bykov enlisted as a private. At the brigade training grounds in the Nizhny Novgorod region town of Mulino, he underwent basic training. He said he was a reluctant fighter when trainees practiced martial arts, like sambo.
Then they learned he was bisexual.
“I was brutally bullied. They put five bulletproof vests on me, it was very difficult to walk, I vomited. I passed out. I collapsed. They put a gas mask on me, forced me to run, crawl, and so on. It seemed like hell to me, but that was only the beginning,” he said.
Bykov said he was assigned to a sub-unit within the brigade, a military police-like unit charged with maintaining order and discipline, as well as searching out soldiers who had deserted or left the unit without permission.
The unit commander, Junior Lieutenant Eldar Dadashev, was known for his sadism and drunken bouts of violence, Bykov said.
Junior Lieutenant Eldar Dadashev was accused by Bykov, and in other testimonies filed with prosecutors, as responsible for repeated beatings and torture of soldiers.
“It was like the Middle Ages. They beat people with sticks. Their hands were pounded with hammers. They were handcuffed to radiators. They were deprived of water. They were thrown naked into pits,” Bykov said.
Dadashev’s whereabouts were unclear and he could not be reached for comment. Bykov said soldiers in the unit have told him the commander was deployed to Ukraine.
Bykov’s claims about the routine beatings and violence were corroborated in part by an affidavit filed with a regional military prosecutor’s office by one brigade member: Private Aidar Gafarov.
In an affidavit filed with the Ufa regional military prosecutors, one soldier who served in the 237th Artillery Brigade complained in detail about the abuse and beatings he suffered.
In the affidavit, which was reviewed by RFE/RL, Gafarov complained that Dadashev ordered him to put his hands on a table and pounded his fingers repeatedly with a meat mallet, then struck him in the forehead, chest, and legs with a shovel handle. After one excruciating blow he heard a crunching sound and was unable to stand on that leg. He was later thrown naked into a pit for punishment for an unspecified of time.
After Dadashev was transferred, Gafarov was released, and he deserted, filing his affidavit not long after.
Rape And The Threat Of Rape
More corroboration of institutionalized sadism in the unit came from a small dossier of documentation and affidavits collected by a 34-year-old soldier named Yan Nikashkin, who had served time in prison years earlier.
Bykov said he and Nikashkin were in the same disciplinary unit; Nikashkin routinely refused orders to beat other soldiers and was beaten himself. He also did not object to Bykov’s sexual orientation, he said.
After deserting the unit sometime last summer, Nikashkin collected testimonies from other soldiers attesting to the sexual violence in the brigade, which Bykov said he was given.
In a recording of a phone conversation between Nikashkin and another soldier that was provided to RFE/RL, Nikashkin alleged that Dadashev -- the unit commander -- forced another soldier to perform oral sex on a dildo that was used as a public threat for soldiers.
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Later in the conversation, the other soldier, Yegor Ryazantsev, could also be heard relating another incident involving two of Dadashev’s subordinate officers: an older soldier who was returned to the unit after taking unauthorized leave was forced to the ground face-down, his pants removed, his arms and legs pinned to the ground. The two officers then inserted a firework into his anus and lit it.
The incident was recorded on video, Ryazantsev was heard saying in the call, and was shown to soldiers in the unit.
Neither Ryazantsev nor Nikashkin could be reached for comment.
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Sometime early last fall, Bykov said his uneasy standoff with Dadashev reached a climax, when Dadashev gave the order for Bykov to be raped.
Bykov said he was fortunate: other soldiers declined to follow through, though they “demoted” him, ostracizing him and subjecting him to petty punishments like forbidding him to shake hands. Bykov himself filed a formal complaint with Dadashev’s superior officers, and Bykov said he was transferred to a unit that was not under Dadashev’s command.
Later, Bykov said he learned that Dadashev had given an order to have a colonel -- ranking far above him -- beaten. Military police investigators then opened a probe, and, after finding one soldier with broken hands being held naked in a pit as a punishment, they took Dadashev into custody in September and disbanded the disciplinary unit.
Bykov said he deserted the brigade the following month, and left the country.
On February 16, while in Georgia, Bykov spoke again by phone with Nikashkin and recorded the call.
Nikashkin said the former unit commanders who were responsible for the beatings and hazing, could “go to hell.” But, he said, Putin was beyond reproach.
After deserting from the 237th brigade, Artyom Bykov fled to Georgia.
“The Supreme Commander and all the rest, don't you dare touch him,” he was heard saying in the recording. “Whatever it is, this man has taken Russia to a new level, he’s changed so much for the country, there are no questions to ask of him. I don't believe you even have such thoughts [about Putin]."
“You've chosen the wrong side. So then I have to stop talking to you. Decide for yourself whose side you're on,” Nikashkin said. “If you're on their side, we're not on the same page.”
"Putin has built a brilliant system: governance through fear,” Bykov told RFE/RL. “His entire system is built on fear. But Russia will drain out, and people will then see that there is no power. There never was.”