Russian Soldiers Are Quietly Trying to Get Out of the Army — and Telling Each Other How

Reporting by Al Jazeera on 4 May 2026 lifts the lid on something Russian state media will not touch: a growing informal market for advice on how to leave the army. Soldiers, conscripts and contract personnel are sharing — privately and increasingly online — guides to medical exemptions, contract loopholes, legal challenges and, in extremis, unofficial exits.

The mechanisms

Three categories dominate. First, medical: pre-existing conditions, mental-health diagnoses and combat-related injury claims are being used, with varying success, to obtain release-by-commission. Second, contractual: ambiguities in contract terms — particularly for those who signed up under early mobilisation — are being litigated, and a small but growing number of cases have produced decisions in favour of soldiers. Third, exit: routes via Kazakhstan, Mongolia and across the porous Caucasus border with Georgia continue to function, though at far higher cost and with much greater risk than at the start of the war.

Why now

Several pressures coincide. Recruitment via cash bonuses has plateaued in many regions. Combat losses — by Ukrainian count more than 1,335,000 personnel killed or wounded since February 2022, a figure Russia disputes — are eroding unit cohesion. Economic conditions inside Russia have weakened, blunting the financial pull that drew many contract soldiers in 2022-2024. And four years in, a critical mass of returning veterans is providing first-person reality checks that earlier waves of recruits did not have access to.

The state response

The Russian state has responded by tightening the legal framework around exits — increasing penalties for desertion, narrowing medical-commission discretion, and deploying counter-intelligence personnel against suspected exit-network organisers. It has not, however, acknowledged the phenomenon publicly, because doing so would concede that personnel attrition is a strategic problem rather than a tactical one.

Why this matters for the war

An army that loses its political grip on its own personnel does not collapse overnight. It loses tempo, then quality, then ultimately the willingness to take initiative on the ground. The Ukrainian general staff's count of 132 combat engagements on 4 May tells one story; the Russian conscript Telegram channels tell a different and complementary one. Both inform what happens next on the front and at any future negotiating table.