Tracked down, coerced, threatened: How Russia hunts down deserters and forces them back to the front lines in Ukraine

The names of those interviewed have been changed.

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“Three men handcuffed my husband, put him in a car, and drove away. No one was supposed to know where we were hiding. It was a new place — we had never lived there before. But someone told them where he had gotten a job and gave them our address. Apparently, people had seen him going into a store,” Yevgenia explained, telling the story of her 30-year-old husband Alexander, who tried to flee the front several times but failed each time. The system for tracking down and returning deserters is becoming more sophisticated, but it still struggles to cope with the growing wave of runaways.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian military garrison courts have issued at least 18,000 sentences in cases of desertion and unauthorized absence, according to estimates by analyst Kirill Parubets’s research center, which counted only the verdicts that could be found in open databases (meaning the real number of soldiers who fled may be several times higher). According to Important Stories, nearly 50,000 soldiers were wanted a year ago, and that number has clearly risen substantially since then.

Data from the Get Lost project show that the share of people deciding to flee is growing each year: in 2023, deserters accounted for 8.8% of all requests the project received; in 2024, it was 19%; and by June 2025, it had risen to 22%. Between October 2022 and October 2025, the project helped 1,001 deserters leave the country, while another 1,501 remain in hiding within Russia.

Desertion carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years (under Article 338 of the Russian Criminal Code), but army commanders often prefer not to send runaways to court. Instead, they try by any means necessary to fill the gaps in their ranks and return soldiers to duty — using threats, beatings, and emotional blackmail.

“They yelled at my husband for letting everybody down and threatened him with a trial.”

Yevgenia recalls that her husband Alexander first tried to flee the front after being seriously wounded — he realized that the next time, he might not make it home alive.

“My husband said they were hiding in an abandoned house when a shell hit it, and only a few survived,” Yevgenia recalls. “He suffered a concussion and an injury to his jaw. Doctors said they would have to cut it open to remove a fragment, but they didn’t — too risky.”

While on medical leave, Alexander attempted to remain in civilian life legally. He collected medical documents and underwent examinations, but according to Yevgenia, the threats nevertheless soon began: “They were writing, calling, they yelled at him saying he was a bastard and a coward who let everybody down. They promised to send him into an assault unit, saying they’d already filed a case against him because he didn’t want to come back.”

Frightened by his commander’s threats, Alexander returned to his unit. “There they put him together with soldiers accused of abandoning their units and took him in for interrogations. For several months he waited — either for a trial or to be sent back to Ukraine.”

According to Yevgenia, she and her husband stayed in touch whenever possible, and she visited him several times. It seemed he had only two options: prison or death.

But suddenly Alexander came home. “I asked him what had happened, but he just waved it off. Later he said he had made some kind of deal with someone from the unit and would return when they started loading up.” In reality, Alexander had no intention of going back, and he and his wife began frantically thinking of a place to hide.

They moved to a village, changed their phone numbers, and seemed to have taken all of the necessary precautions. Yet a few months later, the military police still came for Alexander.

After being held at his unit, he was sent back to the front line, in the territory of the Donetsk “People’s Republic.” The only thing he managed to tell Yevgenia was that “they’re packing us up. If I get a chance, I’ll write to you.” And since then — “nothing,” Yevgenia says quietly.

Commenting on Alexander’s story, Ivan Chuvilyaev of the Get Lost project notes that the hunt for a deserter doesn’t end with a single check. Monitoring is continuous, so one must always stay alert. The tracking scheme is fairly predictable: phone billing data, home checks at the registered address, and ambushes near the homes of friends or relatives. “We advise against using bank cards,” Chuvilyaev says, “and against exposing your passport — don’t buy SIM cards or rent housing in your own name.”

According to Chuvilyaev, most deserters fail to follow basic security measures, and the military police are simply waiting for a slip-up. Not living at one’s registered address, avoiding bank cards, and keeping the phone switched off are the fundamental rules.

But even when following them, one should take extra steps to stay safe. For example, completely change one’s lifestyle and place of residence — moving not just to another street, but to a different region. It’s also crucial to adopt new communication rules with relatives and friends. “Don’t contact family directly — only through intermediaries,” advises Chuvilyaev. “And of course, don’t drive a car, because traffic police can stop you and run a check.”

“I paid more than half a million, and they still found me”

Sergei is around 40. Before being sent to war, he worked as a tram driver. He had just started taking regular routes when, in September 2022, Putin announced the mobilization.

“It’s my own fault — I didn’t make a fuss or ask about deferments. When the depot supervisor came in with the draft notice in his hands, I asked him, ‘Maybe there’s some exemption?’ But he handed me the notice and mumbled, ‘I hope they don’t take you,’” Sergei recalls.

The next day, Sergei went to the enlistment office. “They told me it wouldn’t last long — six months at most. They took my passport, didn’t let me properly pack, and that evening I was already on a bus heading out.” In the end, Sergei, like many others, got “stuck” in the war for three years. First he went through training at the Patriot Park base, then dug trenches, moving from one village in the Zaporizhzhia region to another.

While on the front, Sergei nearly died — he was wounded and almost captured. All that time, the thought of deserting grew stronger. While on leave, or in the hospital, or in the sanatorium. “I kept thinking about not going back. But I was scared — I didn’t know what to do, where to go, or where I’d end up. So I went back.”

What finally pushed him to flee was the realization that the war would never end for him. “I saw that there would be no demobilization, that I was there for good. And by that point, I had come to understand that we should never have started this,” he explains.

According to Sergei, his regimental commander only made things worse. “He told us we’d all die. Or he’d say things like, ‘Here, I decide who lives and who dies.’ He didn’t always grant leave, as if he was deliberately dragging it out to keep everyone from leaving. And by then, more than half my company was already gone.”

Sergei still remembers his time at the front, near Robotyne, with horror. According to him, their group had been sent there as an evacuation team to retrieve the wounded and the dead, but in reality, they were thrown into a clearing operation to replace those who had been killed.

“They tricked us. When we got there, we came under small-arms fire almost immediately — Ukrainian reconnaissance groups were already on the positions. Our machine gunner started firing back. People passed him grenades, and he threw them. I just fired into the sky, into the trees, because I couldn’t see or understand anything,” Sergei says.

They failed to evacuate the wounded. “All the trenches were blocked by fallen trees — too shallow to hide in. One of the wounded was very heavy, and we couldn’t pull him out. That’s when I got hit by shrapnel from a mortar,” he recalls.

The injury wasn’t serious, but there was no help to be found. “A fragment hit me in the leg through wooden boards in the trench. They put a tourniquet on me and ran off. They said they’d come back for us at six in the evening. In the end, I and four others who were with me stayed in that trench for four days.”

Ukrainian troops eventually found them hiding there. “I didn’t resist — I was ready to surrender — but someone started shooting at them, and they ran away. The evacuation vehicle left us too — it didn’t come because of the shelling. So we decided to get out on our own. Everyone abandoned us — both ours and theirs.”

Sergei spent two days making his way back to his unit. From there, he was sent to a hospital. While waiting to be sent to the medical board, he made his first attempt to escape. “I managed to get to the next town, and that’s where the military police caught me. They took me back but didn’t beat me. Two days later, they gave me travel papers and sent me on leave — I don’t know what changed their minds.”

While on leave, Sergei tried to get discharged on medical grounds but failed and returned. Seven months later, after rejoining his unit, he finally decided to desert. “I went on another leave and realized I wasn’t going back. A guy from my company gave me a lawyer’s contact who could help with paperwork. I paid him more than 500,000 rubles ($6,150) so I could live freely in Russia — and they found me anyway.”

Sergei says he wanted to flee “legally” — to get fake documents declaring him unfit for service so he could be discharged. But the lawyer turned out to be a fraud. “Military police officers came to the place where I was living. I tried to hide, but it didn’t help. I didn’t resist — I still hoped the documents would work. But they told me it was all fake. And they put me in with the soldiers accused of abandoning their units.”

Sergei was placed in military unit 61899 in Mosrentgen, where people accused of unauthorized absence, as well as those recently returned through exchanges, are often held.

“I spent three months there. That place is like a substitute for a detention center. They constantly tried to break us down. Took away our phones, told us how worthless we were for not going back. Representatives from other units — Luhansk and Donetsk — came and offered contracts. In reality, it was recruitment for assault units. They threatened us, saying we’d rot in prison,” Sergei recalls.

Eventually, Sergei decided to escape for the third time. “By then, I’d managed to leave the base a few times in exchange for money. I’d make a deal with someone, and we’d walk out through the gates together. I decided to take the same risk one last time. According to the plan, I was supposed to return in the morning, but instead I found a ride through BlaBlaCar and left — first for Belarus, then for Armenia.”

“I thought the army would change me as a person — that I’d become more confident, stronger morally. I wanted my parents to be proud of me. I wanted to pay off my loan. But in the end, I realized this war is utter nonsense,” he concluded.

“I got scared, for myself and for my parents, and went back”

Mikhail went to war as a volunteer after signing a contract in September 2024. “I don’t even know why I did it,” he says. “I was going through a rough time in life, and in the middle of all those dark thoughts, the idea came to me. It turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made.”

That mistake led to his assignment as an assault trooper. “The training was more or less okay, but once I got to the combat zone, I realized it wasn’t enough. The biggest danger is drones, and no one ever told us how to defend ourselves against them,” says Mikhail.

By that point, Ukrainian forces had already entered the Kursk region, and contract soldiers understood that they’d likely be sent there. But as Mikhail recalls, chance saved him: “There were several KamAZ trucks ready to take us to Kursk, and I was already sitting there, fully equipped, when the head of the personnel department ran in and said, ‘Grab your stuff, you’re not going anywhere. You’re being reassigned to a UAV pilot training center.’”

Compared to his comrades, Mikhail was lucky. He ended up serving at the unit headquarters, helping the commander with paperwork. “The commander told me right away, ‘Nobody’s going to train you, of course.’ One of his assistants had just disappeared — either transferred or killed — and I took his place.”

The new commander constantly demanded that Mikhail buy things at his own expense. “At first, I didn’t want to refuse because I was afraid he might do something to me. Later I tried to tell him about it, and he snapped back: ‘Don’t get smart with me — just do as I say.’”

That was when Mikhail first thought about running away, deciding it was better to get as far away as possible from the army, corruption, and the war. “Now, weighing all the pros and cons, I think it was the wrong decision,” he says. “I didn’t take part in combat, but I still thought escaping was the right thing to do.”

Right before a weekend, he left the base. He made it to Tunisia, where he planned to buy a ticket to Istanbul with a layover in France, hoping to apply for asylum. But, the deserter says, things didn’t go as planned: he ran out of money, and the commander started preying on his emotions.

“There was a commotion at the base, and the commander began calling me through Telegram. I decided to talk to him, to find out what he wanted. He said my parents were dying, that my leaving had driven them to it, and that if I didn’t come back, they’d suffer even more. Then he said I’d either be jailed or killed. I got scared — for myself and for my parents.”

Mikhail says he was promised that if he returned, he would face only a disciplinary penalty. The commander spoke calmly and persuasively.

“I even asked, ‘Do you give me your word that nothing will happen to me if I come back now?’ He gave me his word, said he’d meet me at the airport. I came back, and he immediately said, ‘We need to go to the unit.’ That’s when I realized he’d lied and that terrible things were about to happen.”

When Mikhail arrived at the unit, he was placed among conscripts to await his fate. For two weeks, the deputy commander for political affairs came to see him — yelling and threatening to send him to the front line. In the end, the deserter says, he was sent back to his previous post.

“The chief of staff took pity on me and asked one of the escorts to pass on a message: ‘He’s a good guy — these things happen, don’t send him to the war zone, let him serve at the base.’ But of course, the escort didn’t tell anyone, and when I got there, they immediately sent me to the Kursk region.”

During several months in the Kursk region, Mikhail saw piles of corpses, ran from FPV drones, and narrowly escaped death.

“We would stay in one spot while the assault troops went forward and were killed,” he recalls. “Their bodies looked like they’d been lying there for a year — just bones in uniforms. Some of the corpses were fresh. The smell was unbearable, indescribable. Once you’ve smelled it, you’ll never forget it.”

Mikhail says he felt sorry for the people, but tried not to dwell on it while he was forced to collect their remains. “We picked up body parts too — but only the larger ones, let’s put it that way. For example, if someone’s legs had been blown off, they would take only the torso — nobody bothered to look for the legs.”

He began thinking about escaping again after spending a month as an assistant drone operator.

“The hardest and most unpleasant part is moving to and from the position,” he says. “It’s especially tough on the way there, because you’re heavily loaded — 20 liters of fuel for the drone and 20 kilos of food — and there are drones everywhere and constant mortar fire.”

A drone spotted Mikhail’s group as they were walking along what the soldiers called the “road of death” — an open stretch with minefields along both sides.

“There are some trees here and there, but the problem is there are mines under the trees too. Walking four kilometers in the open, with nowhere to hide, is terrifying,” Mikhail recalls. “We heard a drone and tried to dive into the bushes by the roadside — as much as we could without stepping on a mine. The passage into the bushes was narrow, and there wasn’t enough room for me. The drone flew past us at first, then turned back. I managed to get deeper into the bushes, and it couldn’t fly in — it hit the branches and crashed. Luckily, no one was hit by shrapnel. If I’d stayed outside, it would’ve slammed right into my back.”

But what frightened him most, the deserter says, was seeing for the first time how slowly and painfully people die from severe injuries. When a neighboring drone crew’s UAV ran out of battery and crashed into nearby bushes, they went to retrieve it, fearing the commander’s wrath. “The first operator stepped on a mine — his legs were blown off. The second suffered severe leg and abdominal wounds, and a fragment hit the third one in the head,” Mikhail says.

A month later came his second assignment. During that one, Mikhail was came down with poisoning — apparently caused by water from a stream. “We drank some, and the next day I started vomiting, my stomach hurt, and I felt dizzy. I suffered for a week. Later, they tested the water and found it had been poisoned with mercury. I don’t know how I survived.”

That incident became the last straw, Mikhail says. He began seriously planning another escape.

“In the rear, everything is heavily guarded, so it’s impossible to slip away — you’re always being watched. The only realistic option was to get to Rylsk. I told my commander I was having problems with my mobile bank app and needed to restore access. At first, he refused, but then hinted at money, and I said I’d pay.”

According to Mikhail, he planned to escape in Rylsk as soon as the commander got distracted. But things turned out much better than expected. He found out the commander was planning a trip to Oryol to buy a car and asked to come along. In that city, while the commander was withdrawing cash at the bank, Mikhail ran away.

“I was thrilled, called a taxi to Bryansk, and then convinced the same driver to take me all the way to Smolensk. There were military checkpoints at the entrances and exits, but I hoped we wouldn’t be stopped. I had two phones, my passport, and 300,000 rubles ($3,700) cash in my pocket. If they’d stopped and sent me back, I would’ve been sent to the assault units again.”

Mikhail says he saw firsthand how soldiers were punished — not for desertion, but even for the smallest infractions.

“One guy came back drunk from leave. They beat him for half a day, and by nightfall buried him up to his neck in the ground. He sat there for four hours while they forced him to memorize Article 337 of Russia’s Criminal Code. He didn’t learn it, so they dug him out, beat him again, and sent him to the assault troops.”

Mikhail got lucky. The taxi was stopped, but the tinted windows kept him from being seen. He made it safely to Smolensk and then flew to Minsk. He says he has no plans to return to Russia until the regime changes and the war is over.