The first Russian officer to speak out in detail about the torture of Ukrainian POWs has now spent three years in the U.S. Here’s his story.

In February 2022, Konstantin Efremov, a Russian military officer from the Republic of North Ossetia, was deployed as part of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Three months later, he quit the military, left the country, and went public with what he had seen on the front line. In interviews, Efremov spoke about Russian troops torturing Ukrainian POWs, abusing civilians, and mistreating their own soldiers who refused to fight.