The Number Of Defectors In The Russian Federation Has Doubled

The Army is headed for a crisis.

Over the past year, the scale of desertion in the Russian occupation army has doubled. This is written by "Agency. News" with reference to open data analysts (OSINT).

So, according to the Ukrainian OSINT-project Frontelligence Insight, if the current rates of desertion continue at the end of the year, at least 70 thousand people will escape from the Russian units, i.e., every tenth occupant.

According to the Ukrainian OSINT-project Frontelligence Insight, if the current rates of desertion continue, at the end of the year at least 70 thousand people, i.e.

Analysts have studied tens of thousands of personal files of Russian military personnel collected by the Ukrainian project "I Want to Live", as well as internal documents of several Russian units at the brigade, division and army levels. One of these documents contains a list of 13,800 deserters with names and unit numbers for the period from 2022 to July 2025.

The document clearly shows a steady increase in desertions during 2024 and 2025. Thus, while the document records 3.2 thousand cases of desertion for the entire year of 2024, in 2025 there are already 3.4 thousand such cases in the first half of the year alone.

And this is just one of many documents studied. Others confirm the trend. In some reports, the rate of increase in the number of fugitives is even more impressive - up to six times in a year and a half.

Analysts note that in the early years of the war, Russian soldiers escaped mostly from military bases in the rear, but in 2025 the trend has changed dramatically and now most fugitives are now from the front lines, or from hospitals.

The researchers also found that the Russian army systematically uses extrajudicial methods of punishment in an attempt to combat the problem of desertion. In particular, torture, mock executions and real reprisals are practiced.

According to analysts, the number of desertions has not yet reached the level where it can be considered a crisis. But the problem is definitely serious, given the methods by which the Russian army is trying to solve it. The authors of the report do not rule out that the situation may develop into a serious split within the army.

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