When I saw infantry training, I realized it was doomed to fail – captured dollar millionaire from Novosibirsk

Klimov Daniil Nikolaievich, born on April 29, 2004, serviceman of the 74th Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, 1444th Regiment. Dollar millionaire, an "office worker" from Novosibirsk.

For 2.5 years, his call center extorted money from Russians. After the arrest of two of his accomplices, Klimov decided to avoid their fate, signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense, and was sent to the war in Ukraine. Klimov, along with three other servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces, was captured by fighters of the 425th Separate Assault Regiment "Skala" at the border of Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.

Klimov: We went in on the mission on 25 May; by about 1 June, the manpower was gone. On the way toward the border, you really see hundreds of bodies lying there. It was really grim. Only a few motorcycles were still intact. I dashed in, and the company commander was killed on a motorcycle by an FPV drone strike.

- How many of you ended up captured?

Four of us at once.

An idea came up to set up a scam call-center. The older guys walked us through the scheme. We scraped together some money, rented an office, hired staff. We got to work. We called people, provided fake loans, and took money for "secure deposits" from them. That is, for cash delivery, supposedly to avoid taxes. We fed them all kinds of nonsense. They wired the money to dummy bank cards, and we cashed it out. We operated like this for about two and a half years. Then waves of arrests hit my accomplices. I started thinking about lawyers. Someone suggested signing a contract that would allow me to hide in a normal place for money. I signed it and was assigned to the 1444th regiment formation on November 12, 2024.

- How much money did you make over those two and a half years?

Recently, my accomplices were sentenced. One got 8 years of a strict regime, another received 5 years because he was younger. Both considered the organizers. I didn’t follow up on the small-time accomplices. The court ordered them to pay damages totaling 500 million rubles to their group. That’s about 400 victims, with a minimum loss of 100,000 to 150,000 rubles per victim. This is official.

- And how much did you earn?

Specifically me? Well, maybe around 700 to 800 million rubles.

- I’m just curious. I think you know this firsthand that there was a TV program with Malakhov, and Skabeyeva has also said more than once that Ukraine is packed with call centers, especially in Dnipro, a city known for them.

Let me put it this way: I have a lot of acquaintances from Ukraine, colleagues we talked with and met in Moscow. I also travelled to Kyiv, met with them there; we spoke on neutral ground and even went on holidays together. Great guys, lived the good life.

What did I buy? I have an apartment registered in my mother’s name, that one’s mine. Everything else is registered to more distant relatives who don’t even share my surname. I have a car of my own, an ordinary Mercedes E 200. The rest of the money is invested, some in crypto, some in gold sitting in bank accounts.

- So, I take it things didn’t go exactly as you expected?

- Didn’t they? I’d say the chain of circumstances struck me, but nevertheless, they let me choose my position. Well, how exactly? They let me pick the position I wanted myself. Initially, I was enlisted as a rifleman in an assault platoon, just a regular assault trooper. But when the unit was being formed, the chief of staff was assigning positions and came up to me asking which specific role I wanted to take. They put a list in front of me. I pointed at the radio operator position. I’ve been into electronics since childhood and still am, basically. So why not? I kind of liked being a signalman. How does that sound? And then I started getting into it, it wasn’t bad, actually interesting.

- Did your commanders know what you were doing before military service?

Absolutely not. No. I mean, I hardly ever had that kind of open, straightforward conversation like we’re having now. At most, there were 5 or 6 people I really connected with. Fellow soldiers, ordinary guys like me, young, fresh from the street.

- Why didn’t you approach the battalion commander and say, "Here, take this money, but I won’t participate in combat operations"?

Look, if I gave him money, right? The day after tomorrow he’d come back to me and say, "Give me more money, or you’re going." Then the day after, he’d say the same thing again. And then everyone would find out. The regimental commander would come and ask me for a million dollars. Where am I supposed to get that? From my family? They’d squeeze me dry. And this would happen every time.

- So there’s no such thing as, well, I thought in the Russian army there was the concept of an officer’s word—you say it, you do it. That’s it.

An officer’s word ends where personal gain begins.

- Why do you think so?

I saw it for myself. From my own experience.

- What kind of experience?

Well, for example, I had a fellow soldier, a good acquaintance. We knew each other from civilian life, let’s put it that way. He was let go home in exchange for money. For New Year’s, this New Year, 2025, they told him, "Go, everything will be fine." Like, we give you our word that no one will lose you. So what happened? He disappeared for a week, they lost him, then called him and told him to come back. He goes back, only to find out he’s been charged with AWOL, Article 337, a criminal offense. But in our army, that means straight to the meat grinder. Officer’s word.

- So how did you end up in the assault platoon, the assault group?

We ran out of people. We went on the mission on May 25, and by around June 1, the manpower was gone. I mean the whole battalion. Only small groups remained, scattered in forested areas—wounded, deserters, those afraid to go on. Three days before the deployment to the combat zone, the battalion collected money for motorcycles. Meaning, two assault soldiers had to buy one motorcycle to go in pairs. Even though when they got the motorcycles, nobody even knew how to ride them. I saw them training; they kept falling into the mud, it was just ridiculous. I thought, well, you’ll see how it goes. And sure enough, that’s exactly how it happened. So, what was the plan? So, from a certain point, the first group of motorcyclists set off on motorcycles toward the designated location, that is, to Print-2. From there, some were supposed to proceed on foot, while others would continue on motorcycles carrying ammo, water, and supplies to the position of assembly and then advance forward along the line of battle contact. The rest went on foot, and two ZIL trucks with motorcycles were sent ahead, thinking nothing would happen. The first ZIL was blown up by a TM mine, and the second was hit by an FPV drone strike. Only a handful of motorcycles were left. I dashed in —our company commander was killed on a motorcycle by an FPV strike.

- Were you also on a motorcycle?

-Yes, I was riding on a motorcycle behind the company commander, going in with him, jumping onto the position. When the company commander was hit by the FPV strike, they assigned us to the position of the company commander’s political officer. The company refused to go into combat, the political officer was detained, and I was sent back to Ukrainka, then to Galitsynovka, that’s at the zero line, at the temporary deployment point - I stayed there, waiting for orders on what to do next. And that’s when the order came to fall back.

- What was the outcome of your attack?

Well, I think I already mentioned, our battalion was basically wiped out in a week. Now, I don’t know if anyone’s left. From June 1 to 7, I heard groups of 4 or 5 being gathered and sent out daily over the course of that week.

- Basically, I understand the battalion was thrown into battle, then they started gathering whoever remained and sending them to reinforce.

That’s right. I was ordered to take a soldier with me and move along the Donetsk–Dnepropetrovsk route. We passed through a forest belt we call Lezhak-2, where we were actually captured. We advanced with that guy, along the way encountering deserters, WIA, providing help to those who hadn’t yet received it, as much as we could. We tried to lead the deserters with us, but no one followed. I’m not about killing them, it was my first time, and I was afraid. We walked about seven kilometers on foot. Four more people caught up with us, so the six of us jumped into that forest belt, ran through the Gerb-1 tree belt area, where we were heavily chased by drones. A drone-dropped munition clipped me as we sprinted across that tank ditch, and that’s where I ended up wounded, lying there but still on the radio.

- So you crossed the tank ditch that marks the boundary between Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions?

- Yes, but the ditch has already collapsed, you can hardly call it a ditch now, more of a shallow pit. The original order was to muster people, move them to the border, stay on comms, let the men fan out to their assigned points, await further instructions, and hold for replacement—the 55th was supposed to rotate in.

- I understand that serious forces were thrown at crossing the Donetsk-Dnipropetrovsk border, right?

- Yes, yes, they’ll keep using them, I think, in the future. I really don’t know where they’re going to pull the troops from. Many units were involved, we had, personally, the 239th regiment, our regiment, the 74th before that. The brigade itself took a solid beating. Also, the 55th brigade, the 137th, the 114th, six brigades in total. That’s a massive headcount: every brigade, every sub-unit runs 500 to 1,000 men—you get the picture.

- So all these forces were thrown at the border, right?

- I don’t think exactly in those numbers, of course, but the units I named, you understand, that’s quite a lot of personnel.

- You know, what really surprises me is that your training lasted six months. Honestly, I haven’t come across any Russian soldiers with six months of training for a long time, now most of the training is just two weeks or so.

Yeah, yeah.

- How come? I just don’t get it. Why was your regiment honored with six months of preparation?

To be honest, I can’t say for sure. Many guys I know who have been in the Special Military Operation also asked me why we didn’t deploy sooner. I told them I didn’t know, we were being prepared for something, prepared. As far as I understand, they couldn’t decide where to send us for a long time. I remember rumors that at first we were supposed to go to Pokrovsk, that direction. But then, bam, they sent us here instead, I don’t know why. When I saw the infantry training, I immediately realized it was doomed to fail.

- Why?

Well, because they were basically trained just to dig, dig, dig, dig. They’d march 30 kilometers from the training grounds, come back, sleep, then go out again. No shooting, no tactics, absolutely nothing.

- But six months?

Six months of that. So what were they actually trained for? Well, they’d get good at digging and marching, but not shooting or holding positions. Your guys showed up and scattered just 20 men in the forest belt, in how long? A day? And we held that border for how long? A week? For your guys, taking that border back in a few days was no problem at all. I get that they had losses, but nowhere near like ours. There, there are literally hundreds lying dead along the way. It’s grim. It’s the first time in my life I've seen a dead person here. But that many, it’s a nightmare.

- A whole bunch of bodies, right?

Yeah.

- So tell me, how exactly did you get captured? What happened?

How did I get captured? Well, like I said, as we were approaching the border, I sprinted across the tank ditch, jumped over it, let’s say. I hid under a bush and heard a swarm of drones overhead. So I’m sitting there, and I hear something fall nearby, maybe a dropped munition or something. I thought it wouldn’t explode, then boom, a grenade went off right behind me. I got shredded, obviously. I ran to the left and saw our guys? Russian servicemen, unknown to me. I asked where the 74th was, if anyone was around. They said, "Farther that way, your people are over there." I dash behind a bush, get behind a tree, there are familiar faces from other companies, guys I’d bumped into a few times. I say, "I need someone to patch me up." So I hit the deck with them, lay there with them and stayed on the radio. I relayed the orders from command to the guys because the comms were really spotty. HQ could reach me, I could reach them. So that’s how we stayed in contact, more or less.I lay there with guys who were more seriously wounded than me, trying to look after them. The junior sergeant you interrogated, Sergei, was helping me a lot as well.

So, we spent the night in a dugout, your dugout, I assume, meaning Ukrainian troops’. We’d slip away at night, covered by their anti-drone blankets. One fine day, I overslept until noon. Sergei wasn’t there in the dugout, but I heard characteristic gunfire nearby. I thought I’d better check it out. I popped my head out, and bullets were flying just over my head. I dashed back inside as the shooting died down. I ran to the guys lying there. One was already dead, another was in a terrible state, barely able to speak. One had fractured legs. I asked him, "What happened?" He said, "They were shooting from that side." I asked, "Who?" He said, "A ‘khokhol’ is coming." Well, that’s clear enough. I asked, "So, what are we going to do?" He said, "I fought back." I realized pretty quickly that there will be trouble. I called command over the radio, asked what to do. They said, "Are you even moving?" I said, "Yeah." They said, "Go out and see what’s going on." I took the radio and stepped out. I walked out, turned right, came out from behind a tree, and there he was, a Ukrainian soldier. I said, "Don’t shoot, I surrender." Right away, no hesitation. He said, "Drop the radio." So I dropped it and stepped toward him. That was it—sit down. Next to me, I saw a junior sergeant sitting, and another wounded guy. That’s basically how I got captured. I started trying to talk, to negotiate with my captor, let’s call him that. He told me, "If you behave, there won’t be any problems, and you’ll live."

How many of you were captured?

Four at once.

Thanks to the "Skala" regiment for saving our lives.