Russian Officer Defects, Guides Strikes Killing His Own Countrymen

A young Russian officer who once toasted his future in uniform now stands among Ukraine's fighters, credited with helping to kill more than 300 of his former comrades. In a long narrative for the Wall Street Journal, reporter Matthew Luxmoore traces how 26-year-old Lt. Lev Stupnikov went from model cadet to one of Kyiv's most valuable informants, feeding coordinates, radio frequencies, and movement plans that helped Ukraine obliterate Russian units near the embattled city of Vuhledar. His first major tip, relayed by phone from a frozen training field, led to a missile strike that wiped out dozens of troops and a top Russian commander. "The death toll was among the highest from any single strike since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine two years earlier," Luxmoore writes.

That strike also marked the start of a monthslong run of lethal sabotage. The piece opens a window into Ukraine's wider effort to recruit Russians—from front-line soldiers to factory workers—into a growing underground network aimed at weakening Vladimir Putin's rule from within. Central to Stupnikov's turn: his disillusioned mother, who quietly opposed the war and pushed him toward defection, and a Ukrainian-linked fixer who manages such informants. "Some nights, as Stupnikov began drifting off, he would suddenly see and hear explosions like the ones he had helped bring about," Luxmoore writes. "In those moments, he tried to brush aside the guilt and rationalize what he was doing. He told himself the victims were bad people. Russia would have sent them to their slaughter anyway." For the full story of Stupnikov's secret double life and high-risk escape, more here.