Deserted Or Dead? Russian Military Saves Money By Declaring Missing Soldiers AWOL

Marina’s son was sent on a combat mission in Ukraine on July 20, 2025, and sent a photo from the front that day, along with a message saying he had been lightly wounded when a drone exploded nearby.

Ten days later, an officer in his unit assured her he was OK and would contact her when he got a chance, Marina told RFE/RL, asking that her last name be withheld for fear of repercussions from the Russian state.

But she hasn’t heard from her son since. And when she called a Defense Ministry hotline that August to seek information about his fate, she learned that he had been declared absent without leave (AWOL) as of July 23.

Over a year later, Marina fears her son is dead. She also suspects she is one of many Russians whose sons, husbands, or fathers have been declared AWOL despite the high likelihood that that they have in fact been killed or gone missing in action.

The main motive for such deception is money: A soldier’s pay is suspended when he is declared AWOL, and family members are not entitled to the payments promised to relatives of the dead or missing -- or to benefits such as preferential treatment for children when it comes to places at educational institutions from kindergarten to university.

Marina, who lives in the Kemerovo region of Siberia, mounted a legal effort last summer to have her son’s status changed to missing or killed in action. She said the same officer who reassured her in July 2025 had only recently begun to respond to her queries and told her that it had been impossible to evacuate soldiers from the battlefield where he was sent on the combat mission.

“So how could he have left the area of his own accord? There’s intense fighting there to this day,” she told RFE/RL.

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Marina has gone through two lawyers and spent some 200,000 rubles ($2,500) on her case, which has finally gone to court.

“Many wives and children [of soldiers] don’t have the money [to seek legal recourse]. They write complaints to the unit and the Defense Ministry, but they almost never get anywhere.”

Larisa, a Rostov region resident, has not received her husband’s pay since he was declared AWOL last December. Busy caring for an infant and an older child, she said she does not have the time or resources to fight for a change in his status.

“In my soul, I hope my husband is a captive, but I understand that he is probably dead. His fellow servicemen said the place where he was located was such a mess that he had almost no chance,” she told RFE/RL. “The commander admitted…my husband was on a combat mission and had nowhere to run. But they still listed him as AWOL.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, seeking to subjugate a country that has been independent since the Soviet collapse of 1991.

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High wages and other payments, such as death benefits for relatives, have been a major incentive for Russian men to sign contracts to fight in Europe’s deadliest war since 1945. But the Russian military has been struggling to maintain manpower levels as the war drags on toward the five-year mark and Moscow’s forces suffer heavy losses while gaining ground at a glacial pace on the battlefield.

A Russian human rights activist whose name is being withheld due to security concerns said that in about 95 percent of the cases known to him in which a serviceman has disappeared, evidence indicated that the soldier may have been badly wounded, captured by Ukrainian forces, or killed rather than going AWOL or deserting.

He estimated that the Russian state saves up to 13 million rubles ($160,000) for each soldier who is falsely reported as having gone AWOL. It also allows commanders to avoid taking the steps needed to declare soldier missing in action: gathering documents, questioning fellow servicemen, alerting relatives, and so forth.

“It’s far simpler to declare a person AWOL and say that his whereabouts are unknown,” the activist, who advocates for the rights of soldiers and their families, told RFE/RL.

Women whose husbands have been declared missing told RFE/RL they are eligible for monthly payments of the equivalent of about $2,000.

Currently, a soldier’s death triggers a one-time payment totaling 14.2 million rubles ($175,000) from the federal government in Moscow, including a 5-million-ruble bonus decreed by Putin, and many regions provide additional payments of up to 3 million rubles ($37,000).

Putin has made a show of honoring Russians who sign up to fight in what the Kremlin calls the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, and of holding them up as exemplars of patriotism. But the ordeals faced by relatives of soldiers falsely declared AWOL suggests an atmosphere of uncaring and neglect.

The numbers are hard to pin down: There is no publicly available record listing soldiers who have been declared AWOL. Participants in social media chats that bring together relatives of soldiers who have gone missing say the number of notices about soldiers declared AWOL surged in late 2025.

Screenshot of a social media post seeking information on the fate and whereabouts of a Russian soldier who has been declared absent without leave. It says his wife, mother, and mother-in-law are searching for him.

Notices often include a photograph and the soldier’s name, call sign, date of birth, and the date AWOL status was assigned. “Wife is searching” or “Sister is searching,” many of them say, and the participants sometimes exchange advice on how best to seek a change in status -- an uphill battle with bureaucracy and other obstacles, Marina said.

“You need to gather all the evidence that the person went on a combat mission: their messages, screenshots of their correspondence, and testimony from fellow soldiers. Then, contact the unit commander and the military registration and enlistment office, file a search warrant with the military police and a complaint with the military prosecutor's office. Attach all collected evidence to the complaint," she said. "Sometimes you have to wait seven to eight months for a response. Often, the prosecutor's office sides with the command and reports that it found no violations. Then you have to file further complaints, search for new evidence, and then go to court."

Marina said that when she began her effort to have her son’s status changed, she “knew it might take years.”

“And that’s what is happening: It’s now the summer of 2026,” she said. “For the second year, I am not hearing my son say, ‘Mama, I’m alive,’ and he is still listed as AWOL.”

(Adapted by Steve Gutterman from the original Russian-language report)