On June 25, Russian soldier Alexander Lunin posted a video on Instagram addressed to President Vladimir Putin. In it, he asks to be allowed a live TV appearance and a meeting with Putin in the Kremlin. If that doesn’t happen, he threatened a military mutiny.
Lunin he claimsthat he recorded the video after meeting with “representatives of high-ranking officials from the Department of Defense and Security Services,” who he said selected him to deliver a message to the president. The reason was supposed to be that Putin had allegedly seen his performance earlier in June.
In the video, Lunin claims that thousands of Russian soldiers are being held in pits and tortured. According to him, this is a punishment for refusing to follow “stupid, suicidal orders” or hand over money to their commanders. “If you don’t give me a live performance where I tell the whole truth about what’s happening in our country right now, the consequences will be very serious,” he said.
At the same time, Lunin warned that if he did not get to the Kremlin soon and could not perform live, “the army will turn its weapons against the Kremlin.” The video was viewed by 13 million people in just one day.
According to findings portals Meduza and Mediazona from the leaked databases is Alexander Lunin, a junior sergeant of the Russian armed forces from the Voronezh region, who participated in the large-scale invasion of Ukraine. He served in the 150th motorized rifle division, which belongs to the 8th Guards All-Army Army, and was wounded. He is 39 years old, according to leaked records he was born on May 25, 1987.
The independent Russian investigative portal Agency found that Lunin’s previous name was Pustovalov and he changed his surname in 2023. He claims that he has been active in various combat operations and in several conflict zones since he was 19 years old. According to information from the Telegram channel Ne ždi horošije novosti in January, he also talked about injuries, concussions and serious health problems, including mental ones.
In the war against Ukraine, Lunin fought as a member of the Sudoplatov volunteer battalion, which he joined in December 2022, when the unit was created by Russian-appointed authorities in occupied Melitopol. He started as a gunner, later became the commander of a reconnaissance team and finally led a reconnaissance platoon. He claims that during his service he completed training as a mortarman and an artilleryman, and during his contract he served on the Kursk front, where he suffered a concussion.
Lunin stated that he is not currently fighting because he was “fired” from the Bars division in 2025. This happened, according to him, after he posted a video of two fighters sent on a mission without assault rifles. It is also known that he worked in the Sudoplatov center of technical development and services in the occupied part of the Zaporozhye region.
According to his own words, Lunin receives a pension of 4,500 rubles (approximately 50 euros) as a war veteran. Since the beginning of 2026, he has been running his own channels on several platforms. Since March, he has posted more than 700 videos on Instagram. He claims that friends who are still fighting are sending him messages and pictures from the front. According to his own words, he also wants to meet Putin in order to show him these recordings.
