Updated June 25, 2025 at 6:15pm*
KYIV — When the judge announced the guilty verdict, Vladimir (all names have been changed) let out a cry of joy: a few years in a penal colony. “Better this than lying under a bush in Ukraine,” his lawyer told him. They hugged.
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Back home, Vladimir’s family was also relieved. “It felt like a weight had been lifted. Our youngest child is only 1 year old, and now at least he’ll grow up knowing his father. And I know that he’s in prison. The doors will open one day, and he’ll walk out a free man,” his wife, Elena, said.
Vladimir is originally from Luhansk, a city in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine. In 2018, his family moved to Russia, tired of the constant shelling, according to Elena. They all received Russian passports. Then, in the autumn of 2022, shortly after Russia’s mobilization was announced, Vladimir received a summons. He was convinced that those who didn’t show up at the enlistment office would be rounded up by force — just like in the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic (LRP) and Donetsk People’s Republic (DRP) at the beginning of the war.
He also believed that conscripts wouldn’t be sent to the most dangerous fronts and that he’d be back home soon. So he went to war.
The only way out was in a body bag
“I suggested all sorts of options right away — to flee abroad, to go to jail — but he was too naive, too stubborn. He hoped there’d be demobilisation,” Elena recalls. “He kept saying: ‘I’ve been mobilized — I’ve at least got some chance of demobilization.’” But after a few months serving in an assault unit, Vladimir realized that “the only way out of there was in a body bag,” she says.
After two years of service, Vladimir was wounded in the leg and sent home on medical leave. “He came to me and said, ‘That’s it — let’s go to prison.’ So I contacted a lawyer,” his wife says. Vladimir never returned from leave. Before turning himself in, he wanted to finish treating his leg — but didn’t make it in time.
He was detained right on the street, taken to a train station and put on a train to St. Petersburg along with other new recruits, en route to be sent back to the front. “’That’s it, buddy, you’re going to the assault squads,’ they told him.”
I told him to hide his documents and run straight from the station.
“All around him were happy contract soldiers — the so-called ‘millionaires’ — bragging about how much they’d been paid in different regions,” Elena recalls. Vladimir managed to call his wife from the train. “I told him to hide his documents and run straight from the station.”
And that’s exactly what he did. Vladimir hid out at a friend’s apartment in St. Petersburg. He needed to “lay low” for a few days so that a criminal case could be opened for AWOL (absence without leave), Elena explains.
Under Russian law, criminal liability begins 48 hours after failing to report for duty. Once the time had passed, Vladimir went to meet with a lawyer, signed a formal agreement, and together they arranged his voluntary surrender. The investigation lasted three months. “The whole time we were terrified they’d take him back [to the front],” Elena says.
They were especially afraid he’d get a suspended sentence. Several of Vladimir’s acquaintances had received suspended terms — and were then sent straight back to war, Elena says. “We had a lot of mitigating factors — even state medals. But the lawyer kept saying that the main thing is to avoid a suspended sentence.”
So when Vladimir was finally sentenced to a penal colony, everyone was relieved. “Our family no longer belongs to the Ministry of Defense,” Elena says.
Why soldiers choose prison
According to research by Important Stories, at least 49,000 soldiers have deserted from the Russian army. Escaping directly from the front is both difficult and dangerous. In July 2024, so-called “pits” — a term from military slang — were officially sanctioned for holding refusers and those accused of misconduct. These are essentially field detention cells where soldiers can be abused and beaten. For that reason, most desertions occur from the rear — during leave or following injuries — say representatives from Call to Conscience, a group that defends the right to refuse military service.
WORLDCRUNCH EXTRA! 🗞️
Know more • A senior Russian diplomat’s recent comments have inadvertently laid bare the Kremlin’s crippling manpower losses in Ukraine. During an interview with CNN on June 19, Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin was pressed about Moscow’s ability to field enough troops, and conceded that roughly 600,000 Russian soldiers are currently deployed — far below figures once boasted by Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Ukrainian data suggest Russia has suffered more than a million dead, wounded, or missing since February 2022, with some 217,000 of those casualties incurred in 2025 alone. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) estimates Russia is bleeding 35,000–45,000 troops each month, barely offset by new recruits. That attrition is driving enormous financial strain: sign-up bonuses alone would cost Russia about $24 million daily, according to economist Janis Kluge. — Cecilia Laurent Monpetit (read more about the Worldcrunch method here).
Most deserters simply cannot afford to leave the country, says a lawyer who works with servicemen; they have no money, no foreign passport. Fleeing abroad usually requires reaching out to human rights groups — something not everyone is able to do. “And then what? What do you do after you flee?” the lawyer says. “It’s all terrifying.”
Some even literally hide out in the woods.
So instead, many deserters remain in Russia and go underground; they stop using bank cards, don’t live at their registered addresses, flee major cities. Some even literally hide out in the woods.
The fact that most deserters choose to stay in Russia is confirmed by the organization Get Lost. Since the war began, they’ve helped 1,973 soldiers escape the front lines. Fewer than 800 of them have actually left the country, says organization spokesperson Ivan Chuvilyaev. The rest stayed.
Elena and Vladimir, for instance, also initially discussed fleeing the country. “I really wanted to go to Georgia — I’d even convinced him,” Elena says. “But when Georgia’s political course shifted toward Russia… I got scared. I didn’t dare go.” Cases of Russian deserters being extradited from neighboring countries are rare, but they do happen.
In April 2025, for example, Azerbaijan extradited Sotim Savlatov, a Russian soldier who had gone AWOL. There have also been reports of servicemen and activists being abducted from Kazakhstan, Georgia and Armenia. “Moving to Europe with three kids — that’s just too difficult,” Elena continues. “I don’t think we would’ve managed. And there’s no guarantee we’d even get asylum. We could have sent him on his own, but he said he wouldn’t go without us.”
Vladimir’s case — of choosing prison over war — is not unique. Since spring 2024, the number of deserters actively seeking to surrender and serve time has been rising, according to Call to Conscience. Back in late 2023 and early 2024, human rights defenders received about one such request a month. Since May 2024, they now receive an average of 10 per month.
How to reduce a prison term
To avoid the harshest charges — namely desertion — and instead receive a lighter sentence for going AWOL, the key is to surrender promptly, legal experts say. Typically, being absent for two to 10 days during mobilization results in up to five years in a penal colony, Call to Conscience explains. Absence of 10 days to one month can lead to up to seven years in a general-regime colony. More than a month — from five to 10 years.
Desertion, however, carries a sentence of up to 15 years. Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, desertion from the Russian army was punished far less severely. The laws were toughened following the announcement of mobilization in September 2022.
You have to fight to get yourself jailed.
What can push a case from AWOL into full-fledged desertion? Proof that the soldier intended never to return, Call to Conscience says. That includes taking a job, attempting to cross the border, forging documents or other similar acts.
The path of a soldier who decides to go to prison rather than return to war is filled with risks. A criminal case can be initiated just two days after leaving the unit. But in practice, commanders often delay reporting such incidents to law enforcement — because their goal is manpower at the front not punishment.
Initially, they try to track the deserter down and bring them back, explains a military lawyer. That means anyone seeking a trial must persist and push to get their case heard in court, the lawyer continues. Once someone turns themselves in, the military often tries to persuade — or forcibly send — them back to the front.
At the end of 2024, Sibir.Realii reported that at least 150 criminal cases of unauthorized abandonment of military unit had been suspended during court proceedings because the accused returned to the war.
Under the federal law On Military Duty and Military Service, a soldier is officially discharged only after a court verdict sentencing them to prison takes legal effect. “I’ve never heard of anyone not being dismissed after receiving a real prison term,” the military lawyer says.
In contrast, those who receive suspended sentences face a serious risk of being sent back to the front. “You have to fight to get yourself jailed,” says another lawyer speaking to Important Stories. “Never before have I had people come to me actively seeking criminal charges against them.
* Originally published June 20, 2025, this article was updated June 25, 2025 with new information about Russian troop supply, and enriched media.
