I became a researcher to find him. And I’ll find him anyway.
Before the broadcast I finally asked: “Are you the same double who talked to me after the lecture? Who said you knew my father? Where is he now?” The guest answered that this information is worth more than a million and that he wouldn’t sell my father. I clenched my jaw and nodded.…
“I won’t sell him.” It was the only thing I could say. Then I told a fairy tale about three sons: the eldest clever, the middle so-so, the youngest a fool. The army and the church were social elevators for younger sons. Now there is a shortage of young people, and spending them on commanders’ selfish interests is not only inhuman but inefficient. “It’s incompetent cannibalism.”
I had two months left until demobilization. They put a contract in front of me and said: sign. What happens if you refuse? Desertion. Treason. They threatened execution. I signed. Now I’m a prisoner in Kherson Oblast. I got lucky: I survived.
The host has remembered the word “father” and can’t stop thinking about it. The guest told him “Go to hell” with such warmth that the son believed all the more strongly that the man on camera knows more than he says. Tomorrow is the eighth day of the war, and the two of them will have to go on air together.
Read the complete story in “Putin’s Double Exposes.” This page contains only a short excerpt; the book has the rest.
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