WSJ: Russian lieutenant who opposed the invasion helped Ukraine strike Russian troops, then crossed the front line

A young Russian officer who opposed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine secretly helped the Ukrainian side and later crossed the front line, The Wall Street Journal reported, as summarised by Novaya Gazeta Europe on 17 October 2026. The WSJ article is paywalled; the details below come from Novaya Gazeta Europe’s account of it. By the newspaper’s estimate, strikes carried out with his information killed more than 300 Russian servicemen.

An officer who did not want this war

According to the WSJ, Lev Stupnikov, a 26-year-old lieutenant, served from November 2023 as the communications chief of a battalion of the 36th Motor Rifle Brigade near Vuhledar. His mother, Tatyana Yantsen, opposed the war. Together with her son she had turned to human-rights activists who help Russian soldiers desert. In February 2024, she wrote to Ukrainian blogger Dmytro Karpenko, who worked with Ukrainian intelligence, and asked him to help her son leave the Russian army. Through Karpenko, Stupnikov began passing information to the Ukrainian side.

What he passed on

The WSJ reports that he shared unit positions, radio frequencies and battle plans, and disabled equipment. Once, by mistake, he sent the coordinates of his own shelter and drew fire on himself, but he survived. In February 2024, according to the paper, he helped arrange a strike on a training ground near Vuhledar where commanders had gathered. 68 people were killed and 60 wounded, including 10 officers, among them brigade commander Guseyn Musaev. In May 2024, he passed on the coordinates of a building housing two assault units; the WSJ says 20 servicemen died in the strike that followed.

Crossing over

In July 2024, Stupnikov crossed the front line along an agreed route. He handed Ukrainian forces a phone with passwords to Russian drones and cameras, and then joined the Russian Volunteer Corps. He was asked to stay at the front until the end of the war and agreed. His cooperation became public in September 2025 after an interview with Karpenko, and the same month he was put on Russia’s wanted list. His mother and her daughter Alisa left Russia for Ukraine via Moldova in February 2025. His wife stayed in Russia and told Russian state media that her husband’s act was “betrayal.”

The figure of more than 300 dead is the WSJ’s own estimate and could not be independently verified. Novaya Gazeta Europe’s summary does not include a comment from Russia’s Defence Ministry.

Sardaana News editorial position. The following is the opinion of the editorial board, not part of the news report. The editorial board considers Lev Stupnikov a hero who chose good over evil by refusing to serve an aggressive war. In the board’s view, Russia, not only under Putin, has repeatedly brought evil into the world. The board holds that Russia has committed genocide against the Ukrainian people. The parliaments of Ukraine (14 April 2022), Estonia and Latvia (21 April 2022) and Canada’s House of Commons (27 April 2022) have recognised Russia’s actions in Ukraine as genocide, though no international court has ruled on this. The board also holds that Russia is committing genocide against the Yakut and Buryat peoples (our editorial), and that it did so earlier against the Chechen people. In 2004 the European Parliament described Stalin’s 1944 deportation of the Chechens as an act of genocide. The board also recalls the Churapcha tragedy. On 11 August 1942, the Yakut regional Communist Party leadership ordered collective farms of the Churapcha district moved to Arctic fisheries. According to archival data cited by Yakutia’s parliament, Il Tumen, and historians, about 5,000 people were relocated (4,988 by party records, 5,318 by other archival counts), and more than 2,000 died of hunger, cold and disease (Il Tumen cites 2,320 in the first two years). These are the board’s conclusions, not court findings.