A former Massachusetts Air Guardsman who fled to the Russian army just as he was charged with soliciting a teenager in the U.S. says his fellow soldiers fighting Ukraine call him ‘Boston.’ In a video released by the Russian defense ministry, a man who appears to be Wilmer Puello-Mota discusses his nickname, the Russian units he’s joined and if he feels as if he’s a traitor.
“I don’t consider myself a traitor,” Puello-Mota says in the video released by the Russian defense ministry on Telegram. “The United States and Russia are not at war. In the future, I think that the people that caused this in my country should be held responsible for what they’ve done, and we can have some sort of friendship between Russia and the United States.”
Puello-Mota served in the active-duty Air Force and Air National Guard from 2013 to 2022. At the time he was separated from the Guard, Puello-Mota was serving as a technical sergeant and security forces airman. The former city official in Holyoke, Massachusetts, left the United States two days before he was scheduled to appear in court on charges of paying a 17-year-old to send him illicit pictures of herself.
On Monday, Russia’s defense ministry released an interview with Puello-Mota, in which he is kitted out in full battle rattle adorned with a patch of a Russian flag. He says he arrived in Russia in January, but he does not mention his arrest prior to leaving the United States. After serving with a Russian international brigade in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine for three months, he signed a contract with the Russian military at the suggestion of his friends, he says.
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Now, his comrades gave him the call sign “Boston” because he is from Massachusetts, Puello-Mota says.
“The guys get a laugh out of it,” Puello-Mota says. “They get a kick out of it.”
This is the latest Russian video featuring Puello-Mota. Another one in the spring that showed him signing a contract with the Russian military. When reached by Task & Purpose in April, Puello-Mota deferred questions to a Russian defense ministry spokesperson.
In Monday’s video, Puello-Mota says that as a security forces airman, his job included base defense and countering drones, adding that he has been able to use his “leadership skills” while serving with pro-Kremlin forces.
He also praises his battle buddies, saying he has served with them on the front, and he trusts them to look out for him.
“They help me to navigate all the complexities and the cultural differences,” Puello-Mota. “Again, it’s about the people that you’re with, and I couldn’t have picked a better group of people to be here with. I love these guys.”
Puello-Mota says that he became interested in international politics when he became city official in Massachusetts.
“You really kind of stop and pause and think about what’s going here,” Puello-Mota says. “You feel like you have to do something about it.”
Noting the upcoming presidential election in the United States, he urged people to “do their own research” to find out what is happening in Ukraine and Russia, adding that he does not feel it is in the United State’s interests to arm Ukraine with modern tanks and F-16s when the U.S. government is trillions of dollars in debt.
He also claimed that the current war between Russia in Ukraine was set in motion in 2014 by “our politicians coming down here and saying sorts of different things and making all sorts of different promises.”
Puello-Mota did not specify who these politicians were or how they caused the war. In 2014, the so-called Maidan Revolution, a protest and resistance movement in Ukraine, ousted the country’s pro-Kremlin leader. Within months, Russia annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine and began a war in eastern Ukraine that culminated with Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
Since Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, the United States has provided the Ukrainians with more than $55.6 billion in military assistance. Several U.S. military veterans have also gone to Europe to help Ukrainian civilians and fight against the Russians. Nearly 60 Americans have been killed in Ukraine over the past two-and-a-half years.
But other Americans have gone to Russia, including Seth William Baker, who says he is a Marine veteran; and former Army Pfc. John David McIntyre, claimed he arrived in Russia after spying for the Kremlin on Ukrainian forces.
Puello-Mota insists in Monday’s video that he has not betrayed the United States by joining the Russian military.
“The United States and Russia are not at war,” Puello-Mota says. “The United States has done things that are very provocative and very bad. It’s been involved in other people’s politics, other Puello-Mota nations’ interests and should not be doing that. I always say and [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov said this a couple of weeks ago: I think that the country is ran [sic.] by different people then the people that live in the country and feel a different way.”
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