Jr. Sgt. Alexander Glukhov left his unit in South Ossetia in late January and surrendered to Georgian police, requesting asylum. He said his actions should not be seen as politically motivated because he would have done the same had his army division been deployed near any other foreign border.
Galina Glukhov has said that she has been at the border between Georgia and South Ossetia for three days and has yet to meet with her son. She added that when speaking on the telephone with him, the line is often cut off.
"I talk with him every day," Galina told journalists in Tskhinvali on Wednesday. "I came to the [border] post yesterday and the day before. They [the military] promise me I will be able to talk to him, but so far there's been nothing."
She said that her son asks her to come to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in order to meet but she "wants to see him here" in Tskhinvali.
"When he talks [on the telephone], I feel like somebody is pressuring him and that he's confused," she said. "I know my son, those are not his words."
Although Galina speaks with her son over the telephone, the conversation is often interrupted by other people once she starts suggesting he meet her in South Ossetia, and is finally cut off. When the telephone conversation resumes, Galina believes it is not her son, but someone pretending to be him.
Galina believes her son ended up in Georgia against his will, that he is scared and he does not have the physical ability to return to South Ossetia.
"I believe that he didn't leave his unit on his own. Someone's done something with him," she said. "He has never complained about his service in the Army. We used to talk every week and I would ask him how things were and he would say that everything was fine. If he was able to come [to Tskhinvali], he would."
She said her son had not read the information on the Russian Defense Ministry's site declaring that he would not be punished if he returned to South Ossetia, even though the Georgian side told her that they had given the information to Alexander.
"I just wait for the day when I will see my son, I don't need anything else," she said.
