Horrifying footage and testimonies have exposed the barbaric punishments Russian soldiers accused of desertion, disobedience, or refusal to fight face from their commanders. These extreme measures include being taped to trees in freezing conditions, stripped naked and left upside down, choked on snow, or subjected to 'gladiator-style' fights to the death. Executions with sledgehammers, a method notoriously used by the Wagner group, are also a documented threat.

One widely publicized incident in January involved two Russian fighters, accused of desertion, taped to trees on the frontline. Similarly, in late August last year, Ilya Gorkov and a fellow soldier were handcuffed to a tree in eastern Ukraine for four days without food or water for refusing a mission they deemed suicidal. Gorkov filmed the ordeal, which his mother, Oksana Krasnova, publicized, leading to a complaint to the Russian human rights ombudsman.

Gorkov's case is not isolated; thousands of soldiers have been systematically tortured by commanders to coerce them, even the gravely sick or wounded, into staying on the battlefield. Those brave enough to disobey orders risk being thrown into 'torture pits' covered with metal grates, doused with water, and beaten for days. Shockingly, footage from May 2025 showed two shirtless men in a pit, forced to fight each other to the death for a chance to escape, with one eventually collapsing motionless.

Despite Vladimir Putin publicly praising his troops as sacred warriors, his war machine abuses its own soldiers to maintain its assault on Ukraine. The frontline is manned by individuals with severe injuries or debilitating PTSD, who face threats of violence, including whips and guns, if they refuse to fight. Since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, over 50,000 Russian soldiers, nearly 10% of all Russian troops in Ukraine, have deserted, according to a UN report from September 2025. Over 16,000 military personnel have been prosecuted for desertion-related offenses, with more than 13,500 convicted in 2024.

Weighed down by brutal combat, many soldiers are seeking extreme ways to escape the battlefield. Intercepted messages, provided to Ukraine's 'I Want To Live' project, reveal soldiers deliberately injuring themselves, even contemplating self-detonation with grenades, to be removed for hospital recovery. After four years, Russia has suffered approximately 1.2 million casualties, including an estimated 325,000 deaths, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Russia's military apparatus, intent on relentless fighting, is no longer evacuating the wounded or psychologically traumatized, and even sends former captives back to the frontline within days of release from Ukraine. Thousands of complaints highlighting such inhumane practices were recently leaked and published by The New York Times, including one from a former prisoner of war who stated his psychological state made a return to combat a