Report: Russian Ka-52 pilot who posted farewell video is alive and has gone AWOL
Alexei Zemtsov, a Ka-52 helicopter pilot and senior lieutenant who runs the Z-channel “Voevoda Veshchaet” (Voevoda Broadcasts), posted a video saying he intended to “exercise the right of a final officer’s honor.” “If you are watching this video, it means I am already gone,” he says in the recording. The channel has more than 170,000 subscribers.
There is no confirmation that Zemtsov has taken his own life.
In the video, Zemtsov says that until the fall of 2023 he had been flying combat missions from the Berdyansk airfield, where he was also an administrator of the Telegram channel “Povornutye na Voine” (Obsessed with War). In September of that year he decided to “break away” and started “Voevoda Veshchaet,” a channel that Lieutenant General Vladimir Kravchenko “really didn’t like.” Kravchenko currently serves as deputy commander-in-chief of Russia’s Aerospace Forces; at the time he commanded the 11th Air and Air Defense Army.
Zemtsov was grounded because of critical posts on his channel. Kravchenko also took issue, Zemtsov says, with an old post on “Povornutye na Voine” about Su-34 fighter pilots being made to drill in formation after combat missions. Beyond the grounding, Zemtsov says he was offered a trip to a hospital followed by a discharge. “Kravchenko really loves to write pilots off on medical grounds,” he says.
Kravchenko later “forgave” him, Zemtsov says, and he was subsequently transferred to a different unit.
In the fall of 2025, Zemtsov learned that his wife was having an affair with his Telegram channel assistant. He says he “caught” his wife’s lover, drove him out to a forest, and gave him “a beating,” but “not very hard.” For this, Zemtsov was sent to a pretrial detention center for 4.5 months on charges of threatening murder, extortion, and destruction of property.
In the spring of 2026, the commander of Zemtsov’s unit, Colonel Avramenko, pulled him out of pretrial detention and sent him to an assault unit. On April 4, 2026, Zemtsov published a photo on his Telegram channel of a substandard helmet that had been issued to a serviceman “who was supposed to be carrying out tasks in motorized rifle units,” he says. The day after the post, “the debriefings began.” Zemtsov was asked to write a post with a “refutation,” with a promise that doing so would spare him any consequences from the earlier post. “The promise was not kept,” he says.
Zemtsov was sent back to Avramenko’s unit, where the colonel, under pressure, decided to return him to pretrial detention and charge him with “discrediting the military” over the helmet post. Avramenko was acting “on orders” from Kravchenko, Zemtsov claims. “I can’t bear this disgrace. I am an officer of the Russian army who has fought through the entire war,” he says.
Zemtsov also addressed Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Russian federal investigating authority, asking him to look into the Rostov military investigative directorate — specifically Senior Lieutenant Kantemirov, who he says had “fraudulently” coerced him into testifying against himself.
In the video, Zemtsov shows a black folder that he says contains “extremely sensitive information” about Kravchenko. “Fellow military investigators, dig into it later — you’ll find it interesting,” he says.
Zemtsov also announced he was handing his channel over to Z-blogger Kirill Fyodorov. Fyodorov later posted a video saying he had known “a lot of what” Zemtsov had described. “Lyosha had spoken to me about this quite a while ago in private conversations, but I always tried to talk him out of it. And I still hope that Lyosha heard me and that above all these videos were made so loudly in order to get his truth out,” Fyodorov said.
Update. Zemtsov is alive, according to the Russian law enforcement-linked Telegram channel Shot. People close to him who had been in contact with him prevented the pilot from taking his own life. The channel also reports that a search for Zemtsov is currently underway. He has, the channel says, gone AWOL and fled.
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