Ilya Smetanin had deep nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Did that make him spy for Russia?
t 4.30am on February 24th, in the opening salvo of war, Russian missiles hit the military airbase at Lutsk, a city in the province of Volyn in western Ukraine. Footage of the aftermath showed wrecked buildings and a burning car. No one died. Several days later, Ukrainian television broadcast a video confession by Ilya Smetanin, a 35-year-old violinist and aviation enthusiast from Lutsk who admitted passing military information to the Russians before the attack.
“You know he was born in 1986, but he had this strong nostalgia for the Soviet Union, even though he had no memory of it. It was very strange.” Smetanin, who was unmarried and lived with his parents, had played with the Cantabile orchestra for several years. His father had taught a number of the violinists. The musicians knew Smetanin more as a colleague than a friend, but they were still shocked by his confession. “We couldn’t understand it,” said Roman, a double-bassist. Nina, a cellist, lived close to the base. “I was having a cigarette outside when it exploded. Everything shook. My hair turned grey.
Smetanin’s bookshelves were filled with memoirs of pilots and aviation encyclopedias, as well as the work of French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. His greatest ambition was to be a fighter pilot, but he failed the medical exam – he had allergies, a heart irregularity and his eyesight was poor. His father said Smetanin was disappointed. Instead, he studied the violin at the Lviv Conservatory.
Smetanin joined a local aviation club called the Wings of Volyn, made up of civilian pilots who flew gliders and sports planes from a small aerodrome in a village outside Lutsk. He took on the administration of their Facebook page, uploading photographs of old Soviet pilots and planes, and snaps of recent club outings. Vova remembered Smetanin riding around on the same old bicycle he had at school to take pictures of planes.
To many locals, Smetanin seemed to disparage the national pride that had begun to emerge after the Maidan revolution. His friends rolled their eyes, as Ilya’s online presence grew increasingly stubborn, embittered and derogatory. More than one person we spoke to in Lutsk had stopped talking to him. The whole family was woken by the explosions on the base in the early hours of February 24th. “I could hardly understand what was happening,” Smetanin’s father said. “Ilya said to me, ‘This is war.’” Smetanin called his pilot friends, who told him, “Don’t worry. We are all alive. We left several hours ago. We are not at the base.”investigator and two armed agents came to the family’s apartment.
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