June 10, 2024

Forced to Go Back to War


Forced to Go Back to War
Russian tanks abandoned by the Russian army in the retreat from Izyum. Ukrinform TV, Wikimedia Commons.

Mobilized soldiers who escaped from service are reportedly being held in military units throughout Russia and then being sent back to the front as punishment for desertion. These soldiers are transferred to assault detachments, Verstka reported.

By January 2024, at least 800 mobilized soldiers are reported having fled Russia's War on Ukraine. Those whom military police located were locked up for several months in military units, then they were offered the choice of returning to Ukraine or awaiting trial. None were convicted. 

Approximately 170 were sent from Yekaterinburg to Ukraine at gunpoint. “Forty men with batons come onto the floor, and if you don’t go, they knocked you out and loaded you up unconscious,” one soldier said.

Similar cases occurred in other locations, including Rostov-on-Don, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, and Moscow Oblast. Among the soldiers forcibly sent back to the front were those who should not be fighting, due to health problems or family situation, such as being a sole breadwinner. Relatives of the mobilized soldiers complained that the military deprived the soldiers of their right to a trial.

The ASTRA news outlet reported that a 48-year-old father of three was forcibly taken to the front, despite his willingness to serve a prison sentence to avoid deployment.

One reason for these actions, according to a lawyer who spoke to Verstka, is Russia's lack of soldiers for the siege of Kharkiv. The Russian army needs at least 300,000 men, sources told Verstka in March. Since the spring conscription, which began April 1, 2024, Ministry of Defense employees have been persuading conscripts, demobilized soldiers, draft dodgers, and reservists to enter into contracts.

Meanwhile, the number of soldiers leaving service without permission is, reportedly, growing. According to calculations by Mediazona, in March 2024 alon, Russian military courts adjudicated 684 cases of unauthorized abandonment of military units.

You Might Also Like

Make Fairy Tales, not War
  • June 05, 2024

Make Fairy Tales, not War

Russian authorities are spending more on the production of fantasy films than on war films, according to a recent study.
The Path to Foreign Agenthood
  • June 01, 2024

The Path to Foreign Agenthood

A grassroots organization fighting for the rights of mobilized soldiers has been declared a foreign agent.
Victory (Kinda) on Display
  • June 02, 2024

Victory (Kinda) on Display

Russian diplomats recently perused a display of captured Western equipment brought from Ukraine to Moscow.
Disability Numbers Soar
  • May 30, 2024

Disability Numbers Soar

Disability numbers have seen a drastic increase since the beginning of the war. 
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of our Books

A Taste of Russia
November 01, 2012

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.

Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

How Russia Got That Way
September 20, 2025

How Russia Got That Way

A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends.

Moscow and Muscovites
November 26, 2013

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

The Samovar Murders
November 01, 2019

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.

Faith & Humor
December 01, 2011

Faith & Humor

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.

A Taste of Chekhov
December 24, 2022

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.

About Us

Russian Life is the 31-year-old publication of an award-winning publishing house that also creates books, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955