A Ukrainian website entitled ‘I Want to Live’ is said to be in the process of helping more than 800 demoralised Russian troops to surrender.
The channel for Moscow’s troops to wave the white flag is said to have had more than 25,000 contacts overall since launching 13 months ago.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for Dealing with Prisoners of War (CHDPW) said that Russia was widely using frontline troops as ‘artillery meat’ in Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Petro Yatsenko told Metro.co.uk that the platform, named Khochu Zhit in Ukrainian, is helping to facilitate one surrender every two days on average.
A Russian army officer named as Lieutenant Daniil Alfyorov is said to have been among the latest to give themselves up via the platform, having earlier facilitated the transfer of 11 of his comrades via the process.
The platoon commander began secretly working with Ukraine in June 2023 before finding his life was in danger and being evacuated by Kyiv’s Special Operations Forces across the lines, according to the CHDPW.
His surrender came ahead of a report that hundreds of convicts have been pressed into Russian penal units known as ‘Storm-Z’ squads and sent to the most exposed and dangerous parts of the frontline.
A video published by Gulagu.net, a campaign for Russian prisoners’ rights, which was examined in the Reuters investigation shows one unit complaining about their treatment and refusing to return to the warzone.
Yatsenko said that low morale and the use of prisoners, a method deployed by the former Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin before his death, were marked features of the Russian frontline.
Yatsenko told Metro.co.uk: ‘The morale of Russian front-line troops is low because they are widely used as so-called artillery meat. No one wants to be on the frontline and Russians are using former prisoners.
‘Prigozhin and his Wagner group were pioneers of the process. After his death the Russian Ministry of Defence is using the same tactic with the Storm-Z battalions. Ukraine is experiencing a growth in a number of prisoners of war who were Russian criminals of the lower level of hierarchy.’
Alfyorov, however, was said by the CHDPW to be a ‘career officer’ and a Moscow Higher Military Command School graduate who had commanded a platoon on the right bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region.
Appearing in videos recorded at a press conference, he described the brutal treatment meted out by the Russian military to troops who were disillusioned or showed dissent. Alfyorov said such people faced being ‘thrown into a pit’ and ‘tied to trees for several days’.
He also told how he used I Want to Live to contact Ukrainian handlers before organising the surrender of his 11 comrades in three groups.
In an interview he described swimming across the Dnipro during his escape and said he intended to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, a paramilitary group of citizens from his homeland fighting on the Ukrainian side.
The newly-disclosed operation follows the defection of a Russian pilot who crossed the lines in an Mi-8 helicopter in August this year.
Maksim Kuzminov, 28, said on Ukrainian TV last month that he ‘did not want to contribute’ to war crimes carried out by Moscow’s troops in Ukraine.
He was said by Ukraine’s military intelligence to be set to receive a $500,000 (£410,000) reward, paid in the national hryvnia currency, for changing sides.
The CHDPW said: ‘During his cooperation with Ukrainian intelligence, Alfyorov not only helped more than ten Russian servicemen to surrender, but also provided valuable information for the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine. Alfyorov has gone through all the necessary procedures provided for military personnel who have surrendered.
‘He stated that he is an opponent of Russia’s criminal war against Ukraine and announced his intention to fight against the Putin regime.’
Yatsenko told Metro.co.uk that 220 Russian personnel have surrendered out of more than 25,000 contacts since the project was launched on September 18 last year. More than 800 are currently underway, he said. The website lists 24-7 channels including phone and social media hotlines and a chatbot.
The project states that those crossing sides will be treated in line with the Geneva Conventions relating to the treatment of prisoners of war
A repeated thread of low Russian morale has been the apparent use of ‘blocking troops’ to prevent the Kremlin’s frontline soldiers from retreating.
However the CHDPW has not found conclusive proof that the tactic, which has evoked comparisons with the ruthless methods used by Joseph Stalin’s Red Army during the Second World War, has been used.
‘We have asked Russian prisoners of war whether they have noticed such troops on the battlefield behind them,’ Yatsenko said.
‘All of them have heard about it but nobody has given us strict proof.
‘We thought the story might be a way for Russian commanders to scare their soldiers. It looks like “blocking troops” are not widely used except by the former Wagner group forces where the so-called “zeroing policy” [execution for desertion or retreat in battle] was a part of the tactic when Prigozhin`s soldiers gave up a position.‘
Russia’s demand for troops to feed its grinding all-out attack faces no immediate end, according to the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD).
On X, the MoD said that Moscow’s defence spending is set to ‘surge’ to around 30% of all public expenditure next year and the country is ‘preparing for multiple further years of fighting in Ukraine’.
In another update, the Defence HQ account said that in Russia’s Pskov Oblast, close to the Estonian border, civilians were being asked to volunteer for security patrols to guard against drone attacks on Kresty air base.
Two II-76 Candid heavy cargo aircraft were reportedly destroyed and two others damaged after a strike by unmanned aerial vehicles on the facility on the night of August 29.
The post read: ‘Society is becoming more militarised as Russia’s situation worsens. Civilian volunteers are being asked to patrol an air base.’
MORE : Putin facing mutiny from frontline fighters he recruited from Russian prisons
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