Desertions in Russian army on the rise, court records show

According to independent Russian media, in 2024, Russian courts considered more cases of soldiers accused of leaving the units without permission than in the whole of 2023.

Since the beginning of this year, Russian courts have considered 5,204 cases of soldiers accused of abandoning their posts without permission, the Russian opposition agency reports Media zone reported on Monday. According to reports, in the whole of 2023, the courts recorded 5,096 cases.

Newsweek He emailed the Russian Defense Ministry for a comment.

From the first months of the nearly two-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine, there were high rates of desertion and abandonment of posts by soldiers.

It is also known that Ukraine is struggling with desertion as the war continues unabated. However, Russia’s tactics, which inflict heavy casualties, brutally visible in eastern Ukraine as Moscow slowly but steadily advances west, have drawn particular attention to morale in the ranks of the Russian military.

There were frequent reports of the poor conditions in which Russian soldiers lived in Ukraine.

In early April 2023, the UK government reported that the high number of Russian casualties on the battlefields in eastern Ukraine was linked to “widespread alcohol abuse” among fighters sent on the mission by Moscow.

The British Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday that soldiers were being “forced to make improvised filtration attempts, using standing pools of water to meet their daily water needs”.

The shortage of drinking water meant that Russian forces were likely to experience an increase in waterborne diseases and dehydration, not to mention low morale and feelings about how well they were fighting, the British ministry added. The Russian government did not respond to Newsweeka request for comment was sent.

In late April, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, GUR, reported that desertion was particularly prominent among servicemen stationed in Russia’s Southern Military District, which covers southwestern regions of Russia.

More than 18,000 Russian servicemen “left their district combat units without permission,” the GUR said at the time. Most of these fighters were in Russia’s 8th Combined Armed Forces Army, which has long been mired in bloody clashes in eastern Ukraine.

Private military companies, often referred to by the West as mercenaries, and “Storm-Z” units — which are described as punitive military formations — have the highest desertion rates, the Russian independent website The Insider reported in late May. Moscow has relied on these fighters in some of the bloodiest fighting in the most intense frontline areas in Ukraine.

More than 10,000 Russian soldiers have been accused of refusing to serve, including disobeying orders, desertion or leaving the service, since September 2022, Mediazona reported in mid-June. Russian authorities announced a partial mobilization of reservists in September 2022.

According to Mediazon’s current estimates of confirmed losses, a large percentage of Russian fighters killed in Ukraine are former prisoners, volunteers and mobilized personnel.