The story of a 26-year-old Russian officer, Lt. Lev Stupnikov, who defected after becoming completely disillusioned with participating in Moscow’s murderous war in Ukraine, was featured in the Oct. 16 Wall Street Journal. Stupnikov’s actions helped lead to severe setbacks for Russian forces as they tried to take the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar. Ukrainian forces were able to guide him across the front in July 2024.

His story reveals growing political disaffection inside Russia, including in its military. And it graphically describes the shadowy war waged by Ukrainian agents who communicate over encrypted platforms with thousands of Russians, ranging from housewives who live near military factories to soldiers on the front line.

As Moscow’s invasion began in February 2022, Stupnikov watched film of Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities. “They were dropping bombs on innocent civilians,” he told the Journal. “It was evil.”

His mother, Tatiana Yantsen, was an office worker active in anti-war protests in the Siberian city of Omsk. She helped motivate him to change sides. In November 2023, he sent her his orders — that he was to be sent to the front “for the timely replenishment of losses.”

His disillusionment with the war grew, as well as with the Russian military, where to get a pass to go off base many had to pay a bribe. Stupnikov, who had graduated as a signals officer from a prestigious military academy in St. Petersburg, started collaborating with Ukrainian forces.

He was sent to a battalion tasked with taking Vuhledar, a stronghold central to Ukraine’s defense of the strategic Donbas region.

As Moscow’s “human wave” tactics decimated the unit, soldiers like Stupnikov were replaced with convicts released to go to war and untrained recruits tempted by money. He watched as a group ransacked an liquor store, beating up its Ukrainian owner.

In February 2024, Yantsen wrote on her son’s behalf to Dmytro Karpenko, a Ukrainian agent who works with Russian prisoners of war. With his help, Stupnikov began an active sabotage campaign to do damage to Russia’s war, before defecting.

He passed on radio frequencies, troop locations and battle plans. Ukrainian commanders knew exactly when and where Russian officers would gather or tanks would advance. His brigade suffered serious casualties.

After his defection, Stupnikov decided to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, an elite paramilitary unit in the Ukrainian army of former Russian soldiers and other opponents of the Vladimir Putin regime. Some had set fire to Russian army recruitment offices while others joined anti-Putin protests.

Karpenko helped Yantsen escape abroad with her daughter. But she wasn’t sure about Stupnikov’s decision to join the pro-Ukraine combatants. She asked him, “Is this really our war?”

Stupnikov replied that he wanted to make up for having been part of Putin’s brutal invasion force. He believed Russians needed to help end it. “Yes,” he told her, “this is our war.”

At the military academy, almost a decade earlier, he said, “I pledged to defend freedom, independence, and the constitutional order. But Putin destroyed all three.”