By James Johnson
26/09/2025
In mid-September, the Russian authorities once again tried to plug the hole in front-linediscipline. The government commission has supported a bill that increases responsibility for failure to obey orders, desertion, and loss of military property.
Technically, it concerns amendments to Articles 332, 338, and 348 of the Criminal Code, which, when translated frombureaucratic language, means prisonment up to twenty years for refusing to shoot, fleeing positions, or ‘losting’a machine gun. While this is still just a draft, the very appearance of such initiatives says more than dozens of official statements. The Kremlin feels that its army is falling apart.
Closed statistical reports leaked from the Russian Ministry of Defense states that the Russian army recorded over 50 thousand cases of leaving of military units without permissionby December 2024 alone. If the trend has not changed, then by October 2025 this numbercould grow to 70-80 thousand. These are not isolated cases, but a real epidemic that can no longer be hidden.
Russian courts, despite closed statistical information, have left traces. As of May 2025, military courts had over 20 thousand cases against those who refused to fight. Most of them related to absent without official leave. And the vast majority of sentences are suspended so soldiers are returned to service and often immediately sent to assault units, where their chances of survival are minimal. What is important for the Kremlin is not the law, but the number of cannon fodder on the front line.
The Russian army even began using the special term Cargo 500 (“deserters”) to refer specifically to those who could not stand it and deserted, former prisoners lured by freedom, newly contract soldiers who believed in making easy money, and exhausted veterans who have lost faith in returning home. Among them are also those who stimulate diseases, mutilate themselves, bribe commanders or simply do not come back from vacation. In each story there is one and the same truth: people do not want to die for someone else’s war. So the longer the war continues, the wider this crack in the army becomes.
Technically, the military police catch deserters but practically their brothers in arms do that. Deserters are tracked through social networks, their hometowns are visited, and pressure is put on their families. In the combat zone, they are simply hunted down, sometimes even with the help of drones. Then comes beating, torture, and staged repentances on video. Footage showing soldiers tied to trees or thrown into pitscan be found online. On the Internet you can find footage of soldiers being tied to trees or thrown into pits. Some never return at all: death becomes the final sentence from their own commanders.
Commanders do not disdain collective punishments either. If someone deserts, the entire unit is left without holidays and gets more combat missions. The army turns into an environment of fear, where no one trusts anyone.
The history of deserters is a mirror of the state of the Russian army. The Kremlin is trying to convince the world of a ‘sacred impulse’, but tens of thousands of soldiers choose to desert rather than die on foreign soil. This not only undermines combat capability, but also hits internal stability: every new law, every pit or torture only fuels the reluctance of Russian soldiers to fight.
The Russian leadership faces a choice of either intensifying repression running a risk of destroying the army from within or admitting that the soldiers are not ready to die for imperial fantasies. And the longer the Kremlin pretends that everything is under control, the deeper it falls into its own crisis.