Agent Atesz embedded in the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade wrote that the company commander collected all the soldiers' bank cardswhen the unit was preparing to move to the Donetsk Oblast. This measure appears to be aimed at preventing soldiers from accessing their personal funds.
The commander promised to return the cards after the transfer. Atesz called the action illegal and said that the commander forbade anyone to speakthreatening that he was going to obnulit' – a Russian term meaning to kill – those who do so.
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The move comes amid a sharp increase in desertions in the Russian military. On September 28, the Russian website Agency reported, citing the Ukrainian OSINT Frontelligence Insight project, that the scale of desertions in the Russian army doubled in 2025 compared to 2024. At the current rate, at least 70 thousand. soldiers – about one tenth of the Russian contingent in Ukraine – may leave their units this year.
Harsh penalties do not discourage deserters
Frontelligence Insight, analyzing tens of thousands of business records and internal documents, found that contract soldiers make up the majority of deserters. In the 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade, 73.6 percent deserters were contract soldiers, and 22.1 percent — prisoners.
Desertions are increasingly occurring from frontline positions or medical facilitiesnot from databases. Some brigades are able to bring back most of the deserters, but their overall number continues to grow.
This growth continues despite severe penalties — including extrajudicial actions and, in some units, torture, show executions and other repression — highlighting deep problems in the Russian military, the report says.
Earlier, Atesh reported that some Russian soldiers were in the Kherson region they set fire to their own vehicles and means of transport to avoid reaching the front positions.
