Kyiv
–
Russian soldiers call it a sacrifice to Baba Yaga, the terrifying witch of Slavic folklore, who feasts the victims.
A Russian soldier is seen tied up to video, abandoned by his fate with the hand of one of Ukrainian big attack drones, perhaps abandoned by death.
Why this is happening is clear from radio interception regarding similar incidents shared with CNN. It can be clearly heard that Russian commanders order such an order to bind their subordinates as punishment for escape.
Instructions will be given twice. “I’ll hide him somewhere (while the battle is underway), take him with me and tie him to a tree in the next 30 minutes.”
The Ukrainian drone battalion commander says he observed it happen twice and heard more on radio intercept.
“The massive Ukrainian drones they call Baba Yaga spread terrible panic to these damaged people. For them, it’s some kind of scary myth, and it’s kind of scary myth that everyone flies and kills.”
This practice is one of an unpleasant array of battlefield abuses recorded on video by either Ukrainian surveillance drones or Russian military personnel, which has since been circulated on social media.
As Moscow’s army makes slow and relentless progress within Ukraine, the video depicts a harsh picture of the reality of life within Putin’s army. This is estimated that tens of thousands of Russian men have fled since the start of the full invasion in early 2022.
In the video, clearly filmed last winter, the man is shown in a close-up and tied to a tree.
The man says he is from Kamensk Uralsky, a city in the heart of Russia, on the east side of the Urals.
He explains that he escaped from his post after being scared by a Ukrainian drone flying overhead. He says a fellow soldier who caught up with him offered him.
Let us make “300” and let you retreat,” the soldier said, using a term that refers to wounded fighter jets in the Russian army.
Then came the Quid Pro Quo.
“You shoot me, I shoot you.”
The man refuses to take the camera, but the other soldiers say they shot him anyway and easily captured the man from his troops. A thick cable now connects him to the tree, so he looks nervously empty as the voice behind the camera tells him there is a drone halfway through.
“If (the drone) comes here, she’ll drop everything on you,” the voice untold.
At this point the clip ends and the soldier’s fate is unknown.
In common with many troops, Russia has not spoken publicly about the escape of rank. However, social media channels – usually telegrams – offer a glimpse into the deep anxiety and despair that many soldiers and their families felt, giving them a sense of why Russian soldiers chose to quit.
“Dear Vladimir Vladimir Vladimir Vladimir Vladimir vich” begins a video posted to Telegram by a man identified as Yuri Duryagin.
Duryagin says he was fighting in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. There, due to poor equipment and lack of ammunition, only 32 men from his company survived certain attacks. Typically, the company may have up to 150 representatives.
He tells Putin that he received less than a fifth of his salary, but adds to him that his boss will waste his time complaining.
When deaths occurred on the battlefield, they were often hidden to avoid paying compensation to the family members of the survivors.
“I personally saw my comrades die right in front of me. They were killed. My parents tried to find information about relatives and loved ones, but they were told they were missing,” he says.
Perhaps the worst, he appears to accuse one commander of shooting people who refused to participate.
“Violence is something that keeps the Russian army in place and glues it together,” said Grigory Sverdlin, founder of Get Lost, an organization that helps Russian men avoid abandoning or conscription. He spoke to CNN from Barcelona, Spain.
Sverdlin said Get Lost was launched six months after the full-scale invasion, helping 1,700 people escape. The total number of escapes from the Russian army is difficult to determine, but he estimates it is in tens of thousands.
The WAR Institute (ISW), a US-based analytics group, says it is leaked data from the Russian Ministry of Defense, suggesting there are more than 50,000 possibilities.
Many deserts before unfolding appeal to poor training that lasts only a to three weeks, Sverdlin said, but those who quit during unfolding often describe a culture characterized by nihilism.
“Their lives are of no value to the commander. For Russian officers, losing a tank and losing a vehicle is much worse than losing, say, 10 or 20 people,” Sverdlin said.
“We often hear from clients tell us that an executive is dead in a week. The executives get another unit, so that’s not a problem for them.”
For Russian soldiers convicted of escape, the sentence could be up to 15 years in prison. However, videos circulating on social media show that ad hoc punishment is also widely carried out on the ground, with the same purpose of stopping others from escaping.
One approaches a large metal storage tank with the man behind the camera resting a ladder next to it.
“Time to feed animals! Those who tried to do f**k, find out what they’re doing,” the man says.
“Are you hungry?” a voice taunts. “Do you want cookies?”
One of the men nods, the biscuit collapses into his outspread’s hands, and he eats it immediately.
In another video, the man on the ground cops as his face is repeatedly kicked. He holds an orange belt tied to one of his ankles. The other end is attached to a jeep, which is driven out at speed, spins around the field and drags the man who bouncing behind it with a punishment colloquially known as the “carousel.”
And in another person, the man is tied to a tree with a rusty bucket above his head. After the bucket is removed, he is repeatedly kicked in the face and clearly urinates.
CNN contacted the Russian Ministry of Defense to comment on the punishment of the escapee shown in the video, but received no reply.
Estimates by Western governments and academic institutions have poured out the number of Russians killed or injured to around one million since February 2022. The NATO executive director recently said 100,000 Russian soldiers had died in 2025 alone.
Ukraine has its own problems with morale and escape, but one emotion appears to be far lower within its ranks. It is a lack of belief in the cause.
Sverdlin said this is what you hear most often hear from Russian soldiers who are helping him escape.
“Some of them just say, ‘I don’t want to die here,’ but the most common phrase is, ‘It’s not my war, it’s not our war… I don’t know what we’re doing here.”
