Russian Commanders Massively Record Missing Persons In Ukraine As Deserters

• 1.12.2025, 8:50

This practice became a mass practice in 2025.

Russia has recorded a sharp increase in cases of military personnel missing in Ukraine being registered as AWOLs and deserters. According to Sergey Lyapin, deputy head of the control and investigation department of the military investigation directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Central Military District of the Investigative Committee for the Central Military District, such practice became mass in 2025. "60% of those who are declared SOCh have this status unreasonably. We seriously faced this problem this year, there was no such thing in 2024," he said at a roundtable discussion on the topic of missing military personnel, writes The Moscow Times.

Lyapin noted that unit commanders should conduct a check before assigning DIS status to an absent person, "but in most cases" this is not done. The lieutenant colonel said the situation has already led to criminal cases. For example, in Samara, a unit commander recorded a missing soldier as having left the service unauthorized, indicating that he had disappeared from the point of permanent deployment, and later it turned out that the soldier had been killed on the front lines - he was identified at the Center for Reception, Processing and Dispatch of the Dead of the Ministry of Defense in Rostov-on-Don. Moreover, he died much earlier than the date indicated by the commander. Lyapin emphasized that the families of military personnel who are declared SDF are deprived of payments, while the relatives of the missing continue to receive allowances, so cases of unjustified assignment of servicemen to deserters must be suppressed.

The fact that Russians missing and killed in Ukraine are massively recognized as having left the unit unauthorized was reported by "Important Stories" in the summer, having studied dozens of complaints from relatives of military personnel.