‘For the Defense Ministry, people are garbage’ Why thousands of Russian soldiers are deserting
Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, at least 50,000 Russian soldiers have fled the army, according to leaked Defense Ministry documents from 2024. Now, in the war’s fourth year, court cases against troops who’ve gone AWOL in southern Russia and the North Caucasus aren’t slowing down — they’re increasing. RFE/RL’s Kavkaz.Realii spoke with experts to understand why so many contract soldiers and mobilized men are deserting — and when that leads to criminal prosecution. Meduza shares an abridged English-language version of the outlet’s reporting.
Criminal cases against Russian soldiers for going AWOL during the ongoing war in Ukraine are relatively rare, says human rights advocate Ivan Chuvilyaev of Get Lost, an organization assisting Russian deserters. “The goal isn’t to punish or imprison them — it’s to send them back to the front,” he explains.
Still, some cases do make it to court. An analysis by Kavkaz.Realii of rulings from the Southern District Military Court shows that many prosecutions were opened only after a soldier’s second desertion. After the first, they’re usually just sent back to their units.
In most verdicts, the reasons why soldiers left their posts are either not stated at all or described vaguely as “family issues” or violations of the soldiers’ own rights. This pattern is also familiar to Yevgeny Kochegin, head of the Volgograd-based watchdog group Dozor.
“I wish I could tell you these soldiers are fleeing out of anti-war conviction,” Kochegin says. “But here, it’s usually personal — jealousy, for instance. A wife’s cheating, and the husband leaves his unit to confront her. Or he’s worried about his kids.”
Our only hope is you. Support Meduza before it’s too late.
One mobilized soldier from Russia’s Republic of Adygea, Yuri Musaelyan, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison after being AWOL for over a month. He said he’d gone home to care for his ailing father, a decorated veteran of the Afghan war who had undergone multiple surgeries and was incapacitated. In his appeal, Musaelyan asked the court to reconsider, citing his role as the family’s sole breadwinner and his own need for medical treatment following a wartime injury. The judges were unmoved.
Another soldier, Alexander Korolev, also cited his father’s illness as the reason he left his unit. According to his lawyers, Korolev repeatedly asked to be granted leave to help his father but was refused. In June 2023, he went home on his own, helped settle household issues, and voluntarily reported to the commandant’s office in September. His father died a month later. For his three-month absence, a court in Novocherkassk sentenced him to six years in prison. His appeals — including claims of witness perjury and “psychological pressure” from being thrust into combat without proper training — were denied.
In other cases, soldiers say they deserted because the state itself failed to uphold their rights — for example, by denying them medical treatment after injuries. One soldier, Maxim Pecherichkin, left his unit for more than a month to seek additional care and was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in Pyatigorsk. His appeal failed. Another, Dmitry Nizhelski from the Stavropol region, informed his superiors he needed medical care but was arrested before he could receive it; he got six years and three months.
Many soldiers involved in the invasion also describe severe psychological distress. One contract serviceman, Vyacheslav Severin, said his commanders repeatedly denied him leave despite his “acute psychological distress” over his father’s illness. He was arrested after being absent for 15 months and sentenced in Volgograd to five years in prison.
In Grozny, a father of three, Ivan Nikitin, was sentenced to six years after claiming his commanders ignored his worsening health and denied him a medical review despite his deteriorating emotional state.
Pointing the finger
Sometimes, Russian soldiers place the blame for their absence on their commanders, investigators, or Defense Ministry officials.
Take Nurgazy Karabalaev from Astrakhan. He told investigators he couldn’t return to his unit for nearly three weeks because he didn’t have the money for the trip — his military pay, he claimed, had never been issued.
Another soldier, contract serviceman Sergey Uvarov from Ipatovo in Russia’s Stavropol Krai, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for going AWOL. He said he’d been in the hospital — and that his commanders knew it. Uvarov blamed his prosecution on the chaos and lack of discipline in his unit. Even though a unit representative admitted in court that no one had actually searched for him, the conviction was upheld.
“I think personal circumstances motivate soldiers to abandon their posts far more often than ideology or some higher calling,” says Kochegin. “Sometimes it’s just fear — when your regiment’s about to be sent in as cannon fodder and you know you probably won’t come back. That doesn’t make them anti-war activists; it just means they understand what’s happening. They’re sane people who can see how this ends — and they don’t want to be part of it.”
Among all the desertion appeals Kavkaz.Realii reviewed, only one soldier explicitly said he fled because of “poor command coordination” and being sent on missions “with almost no ammunition.” That was Sergey Gusakov, a father of several children from Budyonnovsk in Stavropol Krai — who seemingly signed his contract with the Defense Ministry while still in prison.
Gusakov had two prior convictions. He was given six months for assault in 2023 and a year and a month in a high-security prison for inflicting moderate bodily harm with a weapon. He was sentenced for the latter in January 2024 — and sent to war by April. Three months later, he deserted. He remained free from July to November before commandant officers caught him and brought him back to his unit. The next day, he escaped again, evading capture for another three months.
In his final statement to the court, Gusakov said his actions were driven by “the need to preserve his life and health,” explaining that “due to poor coordination among commanders, personnel were being sent on combat missions under the ‘special military operation’ with virtually no ammunition.” Despite his offer to return to the front, the court sentenced him to eight years in a maximum-security prison.
“For Defense Ministry officials at any level, people are garbage. They’re meat, nothing more,” Chuvilyaev says. “Why doesn’t someone want to fight in a war? Because he doesn’t want to kill or die. It’s that simple. There’s really nothing more to discuss.”
Kochegin argues that it’s nearly impossible to know the full picture. “The army is a closed system, like a prison,” he says. “If there are cases of soldiers refusing to fight for moral reasons, the system has no interest in making that public — others might get ideas and try to flee too. So they keep it quiet. No one can verify it except through the rare internal leaks from the Defense Ministry.”
He adds that even these stories only reflect the small number of soldiers who both wanted and were able to escape. “We have no way of knowing how many others would refuse to fight if they had the chance,” he says.
