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How getting out of the Russian army became all but impossible — even for soldiers severely disabled in combat

Source: Meduza

Since the fall of 2022, soldiers who have enlisted with the Russian Defense Ministry have effectively signed indefinite contracts; even fighters who have suffered serious injuries, narrowly escaping death, are routinely forced to return to the front. The independent journalists’ cooperative Bereg recently published the stories of several Russian contract soldiers who decided to desert from the army and flee the country. Meduza shares an abridged translation of their accounts of what it takes to get out of the Russian army.

The weapon Andrey (name changed) feared most during his time at the front was “Baba Yaga” — Russian soldiers’ nickname for Ukraine’s Vampire attack drones. On the battlefield near the city of Kreminna, where Andrey was stationed, the aircraft were sent out only at night. Because they’re equipped with thermal cameras, they could “see where each person was sitting and breathing,” the former soldier recalls. Whenever he heard one coming, he would “simply pray” for it not to drop a mine or grenade into his trench.

Andrey and his unit mates usually hid from the deadly drones in foxholes — unfortified narrow trenches where “you can only fit by crawling on your knees,” he explains. In August 2024, he and several other contract soldiers were sent to retrieve one of their unit mates who had come under fire from a Baba Yaga. When Andrey found the injured soldier, he was lying in the foxhole with his face buried in the ground, as if still trying to hide from the drone. Pieces of shrapnel had shattered his spine and pelvis. He was screaming in pain.

As the evacuation crew ran back through the forest, they were followed by Ukrainian reconnaissance drones, which were soon joined by attack drones. “At that point, we tossed [the injured soldier] into the nearest trench and jumped in ourselves,” Andrey recalls. Grenades and incendiary devices rained down into the ditch after them. “Everything started exploding, and smoke filled the air. And then everybody else just ran away, completely abandoning [the injured soldier],” Andrey says.

On top of the dugout, grenades continued exploding, pouring dirt into the trench. Andrey, who now had a piece of shrapnel lodged in his own forearm, realized it would be impossible for him to save his injured unit mate by himself. “He begged me to stay with him. I felt so sorry for him that it brought tears to my eyes but there was nothing I could do. As soon as I jumped out, the trench burst into flames,” he recounts.

The next day, Andrey returned to the trench and saw the soldier’s charred body. It took another two weeks to retrieve the corpse and bring it back to the unit. “We went to our commander to report what had happened, and he was like, ‘Alright, we’ll list him as missing,’” Andrey says. “And he made us all sign off on it. Even though we’d seen the guy get burned alive!”

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That was the first time Andrey thought about breaking his Defense Ministry contract. But he would soon find out that this is virtually impossible. Since Russia’s mobilization began in 2022, the Defense Ministry has had enlistees sign contracts that are effectively indefinite. The law left volunteer soldiers with only three legal grounds for discharge: getting severely wounded and deemed unfit for service, reaching the maximum age limit for service, or being imprisoned for a criminal offense.

Russian soldiers receive millions of rubles to sign army contracts, and many of them go to the front voluntarily. However, human rights advocates have pointed out that contract soldiers, as well as draftees, are now effectively forced into “serfdom” — though many are unaware they’re agreeing to indefinite service when they sign up.

‘Your own side would kill you’

Andrey joined the army from prison, where he was serving time for carjacking and assaulting police officers, among other offenses. Early in the war, he signed a contract with the mercenary Wagner Group because he “felt the motherland suffering,” and he fought in Ukraine for a year, until he was blinded in one eye. “We went on the attack near Bakhmut; a tank fired at us, and a piece of shrapnel broke my collarbone,” he recalls. “Then, when they started finishing us off, another piece hit my right eye and burned my retina — now I can only see a black spot.”

Andrey chose not to extend his contract with the mercenary outfit, opting instead for a Defense Ministry contract. “They didn’t give a damn about my vision,” he tells Bereg. “I actually asked to be a driver — but they made me a rifleman-grenadier instead! They said, ‘You’ll figure it out — you’ll learn to shoot with your left eye.’”

Andrey never fully learned to aim with his one working eye, and when he was issued a grenade launcher, he “just returned it, grabbed an assault rifle, and took it out like an ordinary assault soldier.” However, the rifle often jammed after the first three or four shots, and Andrey’s company only had a single reconnaissance drone.

For some combat missions, Andrey and his unit mates were “forced at gunpoint,” he tells Bereg. “You’d be walking through an open field, and drones would be flying around overhead, carrying grenades. If they hit someone, they explode. Guys lost arms and legs. And you can’t go back — your own side would kill you. Better to be killed by the Ukes than by your own!”

According to Andrey’s account, the commanders would send the soldiers “right into the shitstorm” — into foxholes just 30 meters (100 feet) from Ukrainian fortifications. “You’re crouched down in there with the Ukes shooting at you, throwing grenades, cursing at you, trying to get you to surrender,” he says. “Then at night, they send out the Baba Yagas — and suddenly only five of the six foxholes remain. You hear the next one over explode, and you know it means nobody there is left alive. And that yours is next.”

On one occasion, Andrey’s group spent an entire week in a foxhole, never advancing a single meter. “The entire time, our commanders — who were sitting comfortably in their dugouts — were berating us, calling us useless idiots for not moving forward, saying we were worthless and better off dead,” he says. “Some [soldiers] got so worn down they actually started believing it. People took their own lives to avoid hearing and seeing this: one hung himself in his dugout, another shot himself in the trench, and another blew himself up with a grenade.”

Eventually, Ukrainian forces started advancing. By this time, Andrey had started to go blind in his left eye from the constant concussions he suffered. As a result, he not only refused to go on the next combat mission, but also started arguing against the decisions of his superiors.

As punishment, Andrey and other “offenders” were put into a pit dug by an excavator in a nearby forest. Some of the men spent an entire month there. “We slept on the damp ground under the open sky,” Andrey recounts. “The guys who had a heart would secretly bring us bread, water, and cigarettes.” If anyone got sick or was in pain, the unit’s medic would just throw acetaminophen pills into the pit, saying, “Why treat you? You’ll soon be sent to the front anyway.”

Some especially “badly behaved” soldiers were handcuffed to trees and left in the forest without food or water. “For about five days,” Andrey says. “Only our unit mates, the understanding ones, would throw us some food. And when a commission came — the big military brass — we’d be hidden, taken further into the woods.”

“Our fellow soldiers [beat us], the ones who were always close to the commanders; in prison, they’d be called ‘toadies,’” Andrey explains. “We got beaten in prison too, but it was at least clear there that it was for our screw-ups. But I came to the front to defend my country! I didn’t drink, I didn’t screw up — there was no reason to beat me.”

In the fourth month of his deployment near Kreminna, Andrey was sent on a new offensive, where his arm was broken in several spots. After being hospitalized in the city of Astrakhan, he returned home to his wife.

Andrey’s unit informed him that he would be declared wanted for desertion. Nevertheless, he hasn’t gone into hiding. Instead, he’s made a “plan”: if the military authorities come looking for him, he’ll immediately call his former Wagner Group comrades.

“If something happens to me, the Wagnerites will come sort things out,” he tells Bereg. “They’ll find me and take me out of there. We already had a case when one of our guys was getting mistreated in the army. So the guys went to that unit, beat up the commander, and filmed our guy sitting there, battered, in the rain. After that, they showed the video to the higher-ups at the Defense Ministry — and [his] contract was terminated.” (Bereg was unable to independently verify this story.)

‘He’ll be fighting until he looks like the Terminator’

Like Andrey, Sergey (name changed) joined the army from prison, where he was serving a sentence for theft. When he signed his Defense Ministry contract, he had just 72 days left behind bars. His explanation for why he joined the military is muddled: sometimes he cites debts he needed to pay off, while other times he describes an inner desire to redeem himself before the law.

“I didn’t know I’d be left with no legs,” he tells Bereg. “Deep inside, I believed I would return alive.”

In October 2023, Sergey was sent to the front near Kupiansk, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. A month later, his unit tried to capture the village of Synkivka, one of the Ukrainian army’s local “fortresses.” When “grenades started falling” around him, Sergey tells Bereg, he crawled into a trench where ammunition was stored and began to pray. He now believes this is why he survived, albeit with a severed leg and shrapnel embedded in his buttocks, groin, and chest.

Sergey lay in the narrow trench for five more hours, then spent the next six days in a covered bunker. During this time, he consumed only water, cigarettes, and the opioid painkiller tramadol, while waiting for the sky to become clear of Ukrainian drones. Nonetheless, his commanders were initially reluctant to approve his evacuation. “Why pull him out? Let him rot,” Sergey says, summing up their response. After pressure from his unit mates, however, the commanders allowed Sergey to be hospitalized. By that time, he had developed sepsis and needed a leg amputation. To this day, however, he’s been unable to resign from the service.

After his hospital stay, Sergey was assigned to the so-called “recovery regiment” of Russia’s 47th Tank Division, created specifically for wounded soldiers (ostensibly to give them the chance to undergo a medical review and be deemed unfit for service). Instead of being discharged, however, Sergey is currently still being held at the training ground in the village of Mulino, where the division is stationed. He’s been waiting for his discharge order for 11 months. His documents have repeatedly “gotten lost,” and in every new discharge report, his commander tell him to indicate that he’s voluntarily refusing prosthetics at the expense of the Defense Ministry. “They say outright that I’ll be discharged faster this way,” he tells Bereg.

In reality, the “recovery regiment” doesn’t allow soldiers to finish their treatment or to undergo scheduled surgeries or evaluation, two contractors assigned to the regiment tell Bereg. Instead, the wounded are sent “back to the front [to assault units] — like live meat,” according to Sergey.

“People are sent here with the promise that they’ll receive therapy. But usually they’re not there long enough for any treatment and they just go back to the special military operation,” another contractor from the regiment confirms:

Soldiers who complain about conditions in the “recovery regiment” or who argue with their commanders are sent back to the battlefield more quickly than others, Sergey says. Just a few months before this writing, members of the regiment were housed in a partially destroyed building near the unit’s headquarters, where they were handcuffed to pipes and left on mattresses strewn on the floor without food or water. Some of the men had their ribs broken with police batons and were then sent to the front, Sergey tells Bereg. (According to him, this “torture chamber” was finally closed after a recent inspection by military police.)

Wounded soldiers are also lured back to the front under false pretenses. The commanders of the “recovery regiment” offer nearly all soldiers who are awaiting treatment and discharge the option of transferring from the barracks in Mulino to a “full-fledged hospital in the Luhansk region” (and sending former inmates there is mandatory, according to Sergey).

“Anyone who’s injured or who limps is promised that ‘all further examinations and treatment will be done there,” says a contractor who was sent to the “hospital” and who requested anonymity. “But there’s never been a hospital there! It’s just a training and distribution base where they sort out conscripts and contractors, retrain them at the training ground, divide them into platoons and companies, and send them off.”

Sergey has repeatedly witnessed injured soldiers being sent back to the front before they’ve recovered. Usually, he says, this occurs at the very start of the weekend so that “when the guys arrive and realize where they are, they won’t be able to call the Investigative Committee or the prosecutor’s office.” Recently, the regiment sent a soldier with liver cirrhosis and three soldiers with broken bones to the nonexistent hospital. “Tomorrow, they’re sending a guy with hepatitis, a soldier with HIV, and a person missing an arm,” Sergey tells Bereg. “I can’t even imagine what he’ll do there without an arm.”

Another contract soldier who spoke to Bereg corroborated Sergey’s account of how injured soldiers are treated:

The soldiers haven’t been able to find evidence of such a decree from Putin. It is true, however, that in late November 2023, the Russian Defense Ministry proposed changing the medical examination process for army recruitment and, “based on the experience of the special military operation,” remove health conditions from the criteria that “do not significantly affect the ability to perform military duties.”

Bogdan Romanov, one of the commanders of the “recovery regiment,” tells soldiers outright that their job is to “go serve” and to “be cannon fodder,” according to Sergey. He says this drives many soldiers to try to escape from the formation. During the time it took to prepare this article, two contract soldiers fled the training ground in Mulino. “They went out for a smoke — and climbed over the fence,” Sergey says.

‘Russian soldier, surrender!’

Gleb (name changed), a truck driver from Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan, started driving as soon as he graduated from high school in the late 1990s. According to him, it was his dream to “travel the world, seeing new places and meeting people.” By early 2022, he had driven “all over Russia and Kazakhstan.” It had been 20 years since he’d watched TV, so when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “I was surprised at first,” he tells Bereg:

That summer, Gleb lost his license for “refusing a medical exam — basically for nothing”:

This “lawlessness” prompted Gleb to take an interest in politics — for the first time in his life. “I stumbled upon a group on [the Russian social network] VK called ‘USSR documents,’” he tells Bereg. “I thought, what kind of documents? How’s that possible? After all, I’m a Soviet person too. I contacted them online — and they showed me documents proving that there was no legitimate paperwork dissolving the USSR, and that the Russian Federation is an occupying force, an imposter! So I had them restore my Soviet passport — and they also issued me a Soviet driver’s license!”

Gleb was now part of a movement called Citizens of the U.S.S.R. Its adherents believe that the Soviet Union continues to exist de jure, and that Russia’s ruling authorities are illegitimate. These Soviet “citizens” refuse to follow modern Russian law or obey its government — for example, by refusing to pay for utilities or repay loans. Gleb decided that to fight the authorities of “R.F.-land,” as he calls it, he would start driving without a license.

“Unfortunately, they only hire long-haul drivers with documents from R.F.-land,” he tells Bereg. “But I borrowed cars from friends and drove using my new [‘Soviet’] license.”

In October 2023, Gleb started receiving calls from Russian military recruiters. They repeatedly told Gleb that if he went to war, his driver’s license would be restored. “They promised that I wouldn’t have to shoot. I would just drive a truck for humanitarian aid or evacuate the wounded,” he recalls. “At first, I didn’t sign, but after six months of their cajoling, I decided, why not? After all, other than driving a truck, I don’t have any skills.”

On May 4, 2024, Gleb was assigned to an assault detachment in a unit of Russia’s 272nd Motorized Rifle Regiment. “I asked my commanders why I was put into an assault group instead of becoming a driver,” he says. “They just laughed at me.”

As a “citizen of the USSR,” Gleb found it strange to see one “union republic” fighting against another. At the front, near Vovchansk in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, he became even more convinced that something was wrong:

Over the army radio, Gleb and his unit mates heard very different messages from the one coming through the loudspeaker. On May 17, 2024, a command came over the radio to “enter the nine-story building” where Russian soldiers were already “conducting a cleansing operation.” As Gleb’s group approached the building, they were ambushed by snipers, machine gunners, and drones. Two were killed on the spot, while the rest fled.

A few minutes later, a barrage of curses came through the radio: “What the hell are you doing, motherfuckers? Get in there! What are you afraid of? You came here to fight, not to go to kindergarten!”

“Our commander [on the ground] tried to tell them that we’d all get wiped out there,” Gleb says. “[But the higher command responded,] ‘I don’t want to hear anything, just get going — otherwise I’ll come over there and shoot you myself!’”

The group decided to approach the building from a different angle, but they were intercepted by snipers and kamikaze drones, one of which exploded about 20 meters (65 feet) from Gleb. “You’re just thrown by the shockwave — and after about 10 seconds, you feel pain in your leg,” he recalls. “They lifted my pant leg and saw blood pouring out of a hole in my knee.” His commander sent him into a nearby basement to take cover.

It was only two days later, when things finally quieted down, that Gleb was able to escape, using his gun as a cane. The shrapnel that hit his knee had lodged under his skin. At the hospital, however, doctors didn’t remove it; instead, they put a cast over the wound, and Gleb was released on a 30-day leave.

“As soon as I passed the hospital checkpoint, I thought, ‘That’s it — freedom!’” he recalls. “I already knew then that I would flee [the country]. Trying to get discharged legally is simply pointless: this is a real war, and no one’s allowed to leave. And I don’t want to fight for the fictional country of R.F.-land.”

* * *

According to human rights advocates, more than 1,500 Russians who enlisted with the Defense Ministry refused to go to the front before Putin signed the mobilization decree in 2022. The law no longer permits this today, leaving the vast majority of contract soldiers who don’t want to fight with no option but to desert. This is extremely dangerous, however: unsuccessful escape attempts are often punished with torture and death threats from commanders and fellow soldiers.

The Get Lost project, which helps Russian soldiers desert the army and flee the country, has seen a sharp rise in the number of “requests for help with desertion” over the last two years. “By January 2023, we’d only received 28 such requests, while as of January 2024 we’d received 284, and by September, 372,” founder Grigory Sverdlin told Bereg. “And since August 2024, the deserters have included conscripts who were sent to the Kursk region, which Ukraine has invaded.”

Gleb ultimately managed to flee Russia. Other contract soldiers who fought alongside him were buried alive in an apartment building during an assault operation. “Me and those same guys used to sit and ponder what it was we were fighting for,” Gleb recalls. “And they didn’t even know themselves; they were sent here, so they came.”

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to Bereg’s request for comment.