‘Did not show up for the uniform distribution.’ Russians are searching for ten deserters, they recruited them from prison
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A commander of one of the Ukrainian drone units, who goes by the pseudonym Munin, said that he had seen such a case twice and heard about it many times in intercepted enemy conversations. “They call large Ukrainian drones Baba Yaga. They cause terrible panic in those disturbed people,” he said.
In one of the videos taken by Russian soldiers, a man who says he is from the city of Kamensk-Uralsky, located on the eastern side of the Urals, and that he ran away from his position because he was scared by a Ukrainian drone.
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The sound of a drone crushes nerves more than rockets. Before it explodes, a person doesn’t know if they are the target, the journalist describes
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Like other countries, Russia does not publicly speak about desertions in its army. However, social networks, especially Telegram, bring testimonies of the fear and despair felt by many soldiers and their families, and suggest why some decided to desert.
He turned to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that he received less than a fifth of his salary and that his superiors told him that he was just wasting time with complaints. When soldiers died on the battlefield, the army hushed it up, according to him, to avoid paying compensation to relatives. She claimed that they were missing. One of the commanders allegedly “put people against the wall because they simply refused to go against a machine gun.”
‘Time to feed the animals’
According to Grigory Sverdlin from the organization Get Lost (formerly Go Through the Forest), which helps men avoid conscription and assists deserters, “violence is the engine and sealant of the Russian army.” The organization, which is based in Barcelona, began its activities in 2022, six months after the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, and since then, according to Sverdlin, has helped 1,700 soldiers desert.
He says that it would be difficult to find out how many cases of desertion there are in total, but estimates that there are tens of thousands. The American Institute for the Study of War, based on data leaked from the Russian Ministry of Defense, stated that there could be up to 50,000.
‘Total mobilization.’ According to the head of Ukrainian intelligence, Russia is preparing for the third world war
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Many soldiers desert even before combat deployment, says Sverdlin. They complain about poor training, which lasts one to three weeks. Those who desert from the battlefield talk about a culture of indifference. “Their lives have no value to the commander. For officers, losing a tank or vehicle is much worse than losing, say, ten or twenty people,” says Sverdlin.
According to Russian law, desertion carries a penalty of 15 years in prison. However, as videos on social networks show, the penalties fall directly on the spot and their purpose is to intimidate other potential deserters. In one of them, a person who films everything comes to a metal tank and says that it is “time to feed the animals, those who tried to run away”.
When he opens the hatch of the tank, three men in their underwear are crouching in it. Another brutal punishment is the so-called carousel, when a terrain vehicle drives around in circles, dragging a chained soldier behind it.
Sverdlin says that some soldiers he helps only say that they don’t want to die, while he most often hears that “this is not our war… I don’t understand what the hell we are doing here”.
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