‘A raging meat grinder’ How a riot in Krasnodar highlights the Russian army’s desertion problem
In Krasnodar, Russia, around one hundred soldiers detained on suspicion of desertion staged a riot in a bold escape attempt last week. Seven managed to break free — four were quickly recaptured, and three remain at large. RFE/RL’s Kavkaz.Realii looked into what sparked this mass attempt to flee and what it reveals about how the Russian army treats deserters. Meduza shares an abridged translation of the outlet’s reporting.
On the night of April 18-19, around 100 soldiers accused of desertion broke through a perimeter fence at the Krasnodar garrison commandant’s office in an attempt to escape. Police quickly placed the area under heightened security, blocking traffic and conducting vehicle searches.
Seven soldiers managed to escape, according to the Telegram channel Baza. Four were captured shortly afterward, while the remaining three are still at large.
Almost immediately after news of the escape attempt broke, activists from the Kuban Anti-War Committee said that law enforcement had been contacting local Telegram channel administrators, asking them to “keep quiet.” Official bodies, including the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and local authorities, haven’t commented on the situation. The Russian propaganda outlet RT reported that police were “looking into things.”
The escape attempt was driven by conditions of detention, according to the wife of one soldier held there and a lawyer representing two others. They told the Telegram channel Astra that dozens of soldiers had been living in tents for months, including during the winter. “They’re all drinking there; my husband was beaten three weeks ago, he was covered in bruises. I demanded that the injuries be documented [but there was] no investigation,” one source told Astra. “Some of those being held are category D [unfit for military service], some are missing an eye, some are missing limbs.”
A lawyer who spoke to Astra on condition of anonymity confirmed that some detainees had been held in the camp for more six months. “They live in tents outside. They’re given food. There’s an outdoor toilet, a shower. They’re behind a wire fence. They don’t leave the area, there’s morning [and] evening roll call. That’s it. More than a hundred people, and they do nothing,” the lawyer said.
The Kuban Anti-War Committee confirmed to Kavkaz.Realii that they had previously received reports about the deserters being held in Krasnodar, but their exact location was previously unknown. The Committee also highlighted that forced returns to the front lines, including through detention, have become widespread in the region.
‘Designed to destroy people’
Human rights advocate Ivan Chuvilyaev of Get Lost, an organization assisting Russian deserters, believes the Krasnodar rebellion is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger, systemic issue.
According to Chuvilyaev, escape attempts like these rarely make headlines unless they turn into public incidents. However, before that point, each deserter typically faces a long chain of events: leaving the front lines, months on the run across Russia, detention, accusations of desertion, and ultimately being sent to a special detention unit for soldiers accused of desertion or abandonment of duty. In formal legal terms, such facilities don’t exist, but they’re created by the Russian command at regular army bases.
“Desertion cases are handled by the military prosecutor’s office, which doesn’t have its own prisons or detention centers,” Chuvilyaev explains. “So entire military units have been designated for this purpose — like in Novosibirsk, where they closed off a floor and packed it with detainees. In Krasnodar, it seems, they’ve given over the whole base. They’re packed in like sardines, just waiting for the investigation to end.”
These criminal cases, he adds, are primarily used as pressure tactics rather than real punishment. Soldiers are offered a deal: return to the front, and the case will be dismissed. If they refuse, the case drags on for months until sentencing. “The goal is to get them back to the front by any means,” Chuvilyaev says. “No one wants to send soldiers to prison — it’s just not useful.”
According to Chuvilyaev, there are no legal standards governing the conditions of detention for deserters. “It’s total lawlessness,” he says. “Before the [full-scale] war, there weren’t this many deserters, and no one ever specified what to do with them. The infrastructure is full of holes, and people escape from military units, during detention or even after a court verdict.”
Tightening the detention conditions is a way to try to “plug the holes,” Chuvilyaev explains. However, he believes that the repressive system itself won’t change, meaning escapes will continue as long as soldiers have any chance to get away.
“If before it was chaos, where you could hide and run from the draft office, now it’s a bloody chaos, designed to destroy people,” he continues. “This is no longer the kind of chaos that helps you avoid death. On the contrary, it’s a raging meat grinder that grinds everyone up.”
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Sergey Krivenko, head of the human rights group Citizen. Army. Law, agrees that the Krasnodar riot is part of a larger trend in the army. Leaked Defense Ministry documents reveal that 50,000 soldiers had gone AWOL as of mid-December 2024.
Though this number might seem small in comparison to the Russian army as a whole, Krivenko points out that in terms of soldiers deployed in Ukraine, it amounts to about 10 percent. (He estimates the number of active duty servicemen fighting in Ukraine at around 400,000 to 500,000.)
“The trend is growing, especially since 2022, when dismissals were banned after mobilization,” he says. According to Mediazona’s calculations, there were twice as many criminal cases for desertion in 2024 compared to 2023.
Krivenko describes the conditions where deserters are held as “horrible.” “For [the command], these soldiers aren’t people; they’re cannon fodder to be sent back to the front,” Krivenko adds. “Violence is just a way to ensure that happens.”
