More than 50,000 Russian troops have deserted and gone absent without leave since Russia widened its war on Ukraine three years ago, according to a new report from Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight. The group based its report on leaked Russian documents.
In Frontelligence Insight’s estimation, Russia has permanently lost as many as 560,000 troops in the wider war. The figure includes deaths, debilitating injuries—and desertions, nearly 10 percent of the total.
The desertion rate was low early on and climbed as the war ground on and Russian fortunes reversed with Ukraine’s successful fall 2022 counteroffensive, reserved again with Ukraine’s unsuccessful summer 2023 counteroffensive and then became more mixed as Russian forces advanced again—albeit slowly and at staggering cost.
The 5% of Russian troops who desert at some point in their military service roughly match the 5% of American troops who deserted during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early ‘70s. The U.S. Army didn’t collapse then, and the current dynamic in the Russian army “does not indicate a total military collapse or a breakdown in command authority,” Frontelligence Insight concluded.
Indeed, despite shocking losses resulting in modest territorial gains, the Russians may be winning the conflict over the long term, at least as far as force generation—in other words, manpower—is concerned. Ukraine has lost as many as 300,000 troops killed, maimed or AWOL, in Frontelligence Insight’s estimation.
Perhaps most notoriously among desertion cases, the Ukrainian army’s 155th Mechanized Brigade practically disintegrated, in part from a high number of AWOL cases, as it arrived on the front line in eastern Ukraine late last year.
Population dynamics
Ukraine is losing fewer people—but then, it has fewer to lose. There are 38 million people in Ukraine, and 144 million in Russia. “There is a fundamental issue—Ukraine’s smaller mobilization base and poor mobilization campaign,” Frontelligence Insight warned. “Given that Russia’s population is at least three times larger, and their recruitment system is better, Ukraine’s preferable loss ratio should be at least 1:3, rather than the 1:1.86 ratio reflected in current estimates.”
In killing, maiming or driving to desertion three Russians for every soldier they lose, the Ukrainians would deplete Russia’s most important resource—people—faster than Russia depletes Ukraine’s own most important resources. Also people.
But it might take “game-changing external support” from allies for Ukraine to tilt the loss ratio more steeply against Russia,” Frontelligence Insight explained. That game-changing support almost certainly won’t come from the United States, which under President Donald Trump is rapidly aligning itself with Russia and other autocracies.
