Russian deserters speak out
As more and more of the Kremlin’s troops go Awol, three former soldiers reveal their horror and guilt at fighting in the war in Ukraine
With each passing year of President Putin’s invasion, thousands more Russian soldiers, caught between Kyiv’s drones and the brutality of their own commanders, choose to desert. While the Kremlin does not release official statistics, evidence suggests that more men are leaving their post than ever.
Volunteers with Go Through the Forest, a group led by Russian exiles that helps men to avoid serving in the war, say they have assisted more deserters in 2025 than in previous years. Russian military courts have issued at least 18,000 convictions since 2022, according to research by independent media based on incomplete court records. The true number is estimated to be much higher.
By summer 2025 nearly six times as many Russian soldiers were going Awol as in January 2024 and the annual rate appears to have doubled, according to the Ukrainian open-source intelligence outfit Frontelligence Insight, based on internal documents from Russian units. It projected 70,000 soldiers would desert the Russian army this year, roughly 10 per cent of Russia’s force in Ukraine.
“Trump was coming to power and everyone was saying that the war was going to end,” he says. “On that wave, a lot of people signed up. So did I.” He had ten days of training at a local base, then was transported via Rostov to a training camp in Mariupol in eastern Ukraine.
There, he realised his mistake. After an unusually long time at the training camp he was assigned to an assault unit and, in May, sent to the front. “Everybody knows that an assault unit is the equivalent of death,” he says.
For most of the summer his unit held defensive positions and did not advance. All the same they incurred heavy losses, from Ukrainian drones, artillery and mines. “You walk along paths strewn with corpses: some ours, some theirs. Nobody evacuates them so they just rot there,” he recalls. “It was summer too so there is this smell of bodies everywhere.”
By the end of July, of his original unit of about 45 men, he estimates only five remained. “You get used to it pretty quickly. Yesterday you’re having a coffee together, today you find out they’re already dead. It’s a system. That one died. Then there are new faces around you. Then they die too.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/world/russia-...-jx897rbk8
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Berlin:
“We are Russia’s next target… We have to shift to a wartime mindset… Ukraine must have what it needs to defend itself…”
“Russia is losing 1200 soldiers a day. If Putin is prepared to sacrifice ordinary Russians in this way, what is he prepared to do to us?”
“80% of critical components in Russian drones and missiles are made in China. China is a lifeline for Russia’s war.”
“Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within 5 years.”
“Conflict is at our door.”
“We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.”
“Imagine it: a conflict reaching everyone home, every work place. Destruction, mass mobilisation, millions displaced… But if we deliver on our commitment, this is a tragedy we can prevent.”
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20251...ext-target
As more and more of the Kremlin’s troops go Awol, three former soldiers reveal their horror and guilt at fighting in the war in Ukraine
With each passing year of President Putin’s invasion, thousands more Russian soldiers, caught between Kyiv’s drones and the brutality of their own commanders, choose to desert. While the Kremlin does not release official statistics, evidence suggests that more men are leaving their post than ever.
Volunteers with Go Through the Forest, a group led by Russian exiles that helps men to avoid serving in the war, say they have assisted more deserters in 2025 than in previous years. Russian military courts have issued at least 18,000 convictions since 2022, according to research by independent media based on incomplete court records. The true number is estimated to be much higher.
By summer 2025 nearly six times as many Russian soldiers were going Awol as in January 2024 and the annual rate appears to have doubled, according to the Ukrainian open-source intelligence outfit Frontelligence Insight, based on internal documents from Russian units. It projected 70,000 soldiers would desert the Russian army this year, roughly 10 per cent of Russia’s force in Ukraine.
“Trump was coming to power and everyone was saying that the war was going to end,” he says. “On that wave, a lot of people signed up. So did I.” He had ten days of training at a local base, then was transported via Rostov to a training camp in Mariupol in eastern Ukraine.
There, he realised his mistake. After an unusually long time at the training camp he was assigned to an assault unit and, in May, sent to the front. “Everybody knows that an assault unit is the equivalent of death,” he says.
For most of the summer his unit held defensive positions and did not advance. All the same they incurred heavy losses, from Ukrainian drones, artillery and mines. “You walk along paths strewn with corpses: some ours, some theirs. Nobody evacuates them so they just rot there,” he recalls. “It was summer too so there is this smell of bodies everywhere.”
By the end of July, of his original unit of about 45 men, he estimates only five remained. “You get used to it pretty quickly. Yesterday you’re having a coffee together, today you find out they’re already dead. It’s a system. That one died. Then there are new faces around you. Then they die too.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/world/russia-...-jx897rbk8
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Berlin:
“We are Russia’s next target… We have to shift to a wartime mindset… Ukraine must have what it needs to defend itself…”
“Russia is losing 1200 soldiers a day. If Putin is prepared to sacrifice ordinary Russians in this way, what is he prepared to do to us?”
“80% of critical components in Russian drones and missiles are made in China. China is a lifeline for Russia’s war.”
“Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within 5 years.”
“Conflict is at our door.”
“We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.”
“Imagine it: a conflict reaching everyone home, every work place. Destruction, mass mobilisation, millions displaced… But if we deliver on our commitment, this is a tragedy we can prevent.”
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20251...ext-target
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
