In 3.5 years of full-scale war in Ukraine, Russian garrison military courts have issued at least 18,341 sentences in cases of desertion and leaving the service, involving 18,470 people, according to calculations by the analytical center led by Kirill Parubets for The Insider*.
The analysis is based on data from 100 garrison courts (excluding courts in occupied territories that do not publish statistics), as since February 2023, the judicial department at the Supreme Court removed detailed statistics on crimes against military service, including articles on desertion and unauthorized leaving of the unit, from public access.
In the 10 months of 2022, the number of convicted was relatively small — only 884 people. In 2023, 4,346 people were convicted, and in 2024 the number doubled to 8,561 people.
In the seven months of 2025, 4,679 people have been convicted so far, and it has become noticeable that the pace has somewhat slowed down, but, as the authors of the report note, it should be taken into account that many sentences are now being handed down by courts in occupied territories, for which data is not available in the public domain.
The overwhelming number of defendants — about 17,500 people — were convicted under the article on unauthorized leaving of the unit, only about a thousand people were convicted directly under the article "desertion". In addition, 94 people were convicted under the article on evading military service by simulating illness.
At the same time, the authors of the report believe that there may be many more deserters, on average a criminal case is initiated for one deserter out of three, moreover, not all cases reach the court. In May, "Important Stories" wrote that during the war in Ukraine, at least 49,000 Russian military personnel were declared wanted on suspicion of desertion or unauthorized leaving of the unit.
"We assume that the total number of deserters reaches 60,000 people, which is almost 10% of the total size of the Russian forces group in the combat zone".
Analysts managed to find texts of almost 5,000 sentences, which accounted for 26% of their total number. In 30% of these cases, the punishment involving imprisonment was suspended, allowing the military personnel to be sent back to the front.
The average term of punishment involving imprisonment is 4 years. The maximum term was 13 years of imprisonment — such a sentence was received, for example, by Grigory Masyuk under the article on desertion.
* Recognized in Russia as a "foreign agent" and "undesirable" organization.