"I want to live": More and more Russian soldiers are calling the Ukrainian hotline and want to surrender

Created: 2022-12-06 04:54

By: Felix Durach

The Ukrainian military leadership has set up a hotline to make it easier for Russian soldiers to surrender.

The demand keeps increasing.

Kyiv — The Ukraine war continues to rage with extreme cruelty.

Even if there are no reliable figures for the losses of the two warring parties, these are likely to reach new heights by the end of the year.

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spoke on Friday of up to 13,000 fallen soldiers on the Ukrainian side.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also put the number of Russian casualties at over 90,000 people on Friday.

Both figures cannot be independently verified and differ greatly from the losses reported by Russia.

"I want to live": Ukraine sets up hotline for Russian deserters

In order to survive the cruel war, Russian recruits resort to desperate measures and surrender to Ukrainian troops without a fight.

To simplify these processes, the Ukrainian military set up a hotline back in September.

This is where Russian soldiers can call after being posted to Ukraine and planning their own surrender there.

The picture released by the Russian news agency TASS shows two Russian soldiers in the Zaporizhia region.

© Konstantin Mihalchevskiy/IMAGO

As the British broadcaster BBC reports, the Ukrainian authorities are said to have had contact with 3,500 Russian soldiers since the project called “I want to live” (Eng. “I want to live”).

The numbers are said to have increased significantly after the withdrawal from Cherson.

Ukrainian military wants to facilitate Russian soldiers' surrenders - 'partly desperate, partly frustrated'

"Often they're partly desperate, partly frustrated, because they don't quite understand how the hotline works or if it's just a trap," a worker at the project told the BBC.

Many men would also call the hotline before going to Ukraine so that they could plan their surrender well in advance.

This is one of the reasons why the hotline can no longer be reached by mobile phones with a Russian SIM card.

The hotline showed BBC excerpts from exchanges with Russian soldiers and recruits.

A Russian citizen from Moscow writes, for example: "Do you have any recommendations for me on what I should do?

I will not kill Ukrainians.

I want to save my life." Another asks: "I don't know exactly what to do when the Ukrainians come.

Fall on your knees or what?

What do I have to do, how do I surrender?”

"We especially want to appeal to the partially mobilized, who not only cannot fight, but are thrown in as cannon fodder," said Vitalii Matviyenko, director of I want to live.

He emphasized: "This project was created so that their lives would be guaranteed if they surrendered voluntarily." In the past, President Zelenskyi had repeatedly accused Russia of sending poorly trained recruits to the front as cannon fodder.

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Russian soldiers can find more information

on the

Russian citizens are advised to remain undercover and to flee abroad if they are drafted into the army.

Should they nevertheless be drafted, the portal also provides information on the surrender.

To do this, the soldiers should call one of the two “I want to live” hotlines, which are apparently available 24 hours a day.

In addition, there are apparently also ways to contact the organization via the messenger services Telegram and WhatsApp.

After that, the soldiers willing to surrender should take out the magazines of their weapons, hold up a piece of white cloth and reveal Ukrainian positions with raised hands.

They should shout "Zdayus" (Russian, "I surrender").

The Ukrainian military leadership promises the deserters fair treatment as prisoners of war and a chance to phone friends and family in Russia.

Hotline for deserters: Ukrainian military relies on exchange of prisoners

The soldiers would remain POWs until they could be exchanged for Ukrainian POWs as part of a prisoner exchange or until the war was over.

The Ukrainian leadership also promises the soldiers that they will be documented as "captured in action" in order to disguise their voluntary surrender from the Russian authorities.

Shortly after the partial mobilization in Russia announced by President Vladimir Putin, countless men of fighting age tried to leave the country and thus avoid a war effort.

However, there are no reliable figures on the number of Russian deserters.