“Why would they [the Ukrainians] surrender? We’re on their land,” the soldier tells his mother. “This won’t end anytime soon. What the hell do I need this for? At 20 years old… I’m not at all interested in Ukraine. I need to come back and resign,” he says.

His astonished mother asks why there are no Russian troops in Ukraine determined to continue the fight for the sake of “patriotism,” but the soldier, Nikita, just scoffs.

“I had a commander… who shot himself in the leg just to get out of here. And that was in the very beginning! What is there to talk about? He served in Chechnya.”

His shocked mother goes on to argue that someone must “defend Russia” to stop the West from attacking, echoing the Kremlin narrative dominant on Russia’s state-controlled news that Putin’s war was launched to stop an imminent NATO assault.

“They will just kill us all, it’ll be World War Four and Russia will lose!” she declares.