Anton Milaev, great-grandson of USSR Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev, participated in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was captured in the spring of 2026. The “I want to live” project, through which Ukrainian authorities are helping to promote surrender among the Russian military, on July 6 published Interview with Milaev.
Milaev, 45, is the grandson of Soviet circus artist Yevgeny Milaev, who was the first husband of Galina Brezhneva, the daughter of the Soviet General Secretary. Baza Telegram channel, which is still working on June 18 I mentionedMilaev was arrested, referring to his mother, claimed that Galina Brezhneva raised her grandson “like her own grandson.” Milaev himself stated in an interview with the program “I Want to Live” that he “ran away for a long time” from his relationship with the Soviet General Secretary and preferred all his life “to be a simple person.”
Since the 1990s, Milaev said, he has lived in the United States for 19 years, where he worked in many low-skilled jobs. He returned to Russia in mid-2010 because “he was tired there [в США] Live and work for the Freemasons.” He also spoke positively about the Soviet Union, because in Soviet times “there was a state, but now it is in chaos.”
In recent years, Mileev lived in Moscow and worked there as a truck driver. He went to war for money in 2025, because he had to pay off a debt of 1 million rubles. Milaev signed the contract in Kostroma and received a payment of $1.4 million. According to the guy, he intended to become a driver at the front, but he ended up on an attack plane.
Before that, Milaev had no connection with the army, and his training in one of the units in the occupied Luhansk region lasted only three weeks. He was arrested after about two months at the front.
Milayev said that he had “wanted to see the Nazis” in Ukraine, and that he only learned that the stories about them were lies when he actually arrived at the front. “I believe that in order to change opinions about this war, everyone has to be here,” he said.
Leonid Brezhnev comes from Dnepropetrovsk (the modern name of the city is Dnieper). Brezhnev went through the entire Great Patriotic War, starting it with the rank of reserve commissar of the regiment and ending with the rank of major general. The future General Secretary of the USSR participated (as a political trainer) in the liberation of several cities of the Ukrainian SSR from the Nazis – Kiev, Zhytomyr, Lvov, Mukachevo, Uzhgorod.