Av OLESYA VARTANYAN och ELLEN BARRY
Publicerad: 27 Januari, 2009
TBILISI, Georgien: A 21-year-old Russian soldier, sitting down with aBig Mac at a McDonald's here in the Georgian capital, said he hadchanged into civilian clothes and walked across the South Ossetian border into Georgia because he was fed up with his military service there.
The soldier, Junior Sergeant Aleksandr Glukhov, a computer buff from Udmurtia, a central Russian republic, seemed unaware Tuesday of the clamor he had prompted at home. As information about his action filtered out from Tbilisi, the Russian Defense Ministry contended that he had been abducted by Georgian forces and was being forced to discredit the army as "information provocation."
"Glukhov could say anything when subjected to psychological pressure or threats," said Colonel Aleksandr Drobyshevsky, a Defense Ministry spokesman, who demanded Glukhov's immediate return to Russia. Glukhov, a gangly man, said that he had left because he had been verbally abused by his commander, who he said drank excessively and "nagged at me all the time." Glukhov said he had left without telling anyone.
On Monday, he crossed into Georgian-held territory, flagged down a police car and asked for a ride to Tbilisi, he said. He was handed over to officials from the Georgian Interior Ministry, who recorded on video his appeal for political asylum to the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. Asked about his plans in Tbilisi, Glukhov looked blank. "At first I didn't think about being punished," he said. "Maybe I will start thinking about it now."
Russian and Georgian television reported Glukhov's story very differently. A prime-time news report on Rustavi 2, the Georgian news channel, described him as starving and said he had confirmed the longstanding Georgian conviction that Russia spent the summer preparing to invade.
Russian reports stressed the theory that he had been abducted. His mother, Galina Glukhova, reached by telephone in Sarapul, said she was inclined to believe the Russian version. She said her son was only four months from the end of his compulsory service and had never complained to her about the army. "Probably they took him," she said, referring to the Georgian authorities. "I cannot even imagine he would want to stay so far away from his homeland."
Glukhov said his war experience had been far from glorious. He was among the first troops to cross the Russian border in August, he said, but his troop carrier broke down, and he did not arrive in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, until a month after the war ended. When he sneaked away, he said, his unit did not appear to notice. "I had a mobile phone with me," he said. "I don't even know if they think of me now."