Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the autumn draft from October 1 to December 31. During this period, the authorities plan to call up 135,000 people for compulsory military service. This is more than any other autumn draft for compulsory service since 2016, when 152,000 people were called up. The 2023 draft consisted of 130,000 people, and in 2024 — 133,000 people.
Meanwhile, according to the assessment of the Ukrainian OSINT project Frontelligence Insight, the level of desertion in the Russian army doubled in 2025 compared to the previous year. According to the project's estimate, if the current pace continues, at least 70,000 people, or one-tenth of the entire Russian contingent in Ukraine, will desert from Russian units over the year.
Having studied tens of thousands of personal files of Russian military personnel collected by the Ukrainian project "I Want to Live," as well as internal documents of several Russian units — the 2nd Motor Rifle Division, the 30th Motor Rifle Brigade, the 291st Motor Rifle Regiment, the 144th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, the 1st Tank Army, and parts of the 58th Army, researchers concluded that by the summer of 2025, the monthly number of desertion cases and unauthorized leave from units was almost six times higher than in January 2024.
According to a document consisting of 13.8 thousand cases since the beginning of the war, from January to incomplete July 2025, 3.4 thousand cases of desertion were registered, whereas for the entire previous year — 3.2 thousand, the study says.
As noted by Frontelligence Insight, previously, Russian military personnel most often deserted from military bases, but by 2025, more and more servicemen were leaving directly from the front line or not returning from medical facilities.
In total, by the end of 2024, 50.5 thousand military personnel had deserted from the Russian army, the project reported, citing data from an internal presentation of the Russian Ministry of Defense. A similar estimate is given by "Important Stories"*, which estimated the total number of deserters by the end of last year at 49,000 people.
* Recognized in Russia as "foreign agents" and "undesirable" organizations.