On top: two men in a shallow well, both apparently deserters, are instructed to fight each other, and only the winner can leave when everything is done
Russian soldiers call this practice a sacrifice to Baba Yaga, a fearsome witch of Slavic folklore that feeds on her victims.
A Russian military man is seen in a video to be tied to a tree and abandoned to his destination – possibly death – at the hands of one of Ukraine’s great attack drones.
The reason this is happening is well patent in a radio interception on a similar incident, shared with CNN, in which a Russian commander is clearly heard to order that a subordinate be tied in this way as a punishment for desertion.
The instruction is given twice: “hide it somewhere (as long as the fights take place) and then take it from there and tie it to a tree … in the next half an hour.”
A Ukrainian commander of a drone battalion says he has seen this happen twice and has heard it many times in radio interceptions.
“Any large Ukrainian drone call Baba Yaga. Spreads terrible panic among the injured people. For them, it’s a kind of frightening myth that flies and kills everyone,” the commander, who uses the pseudonym Munin told CNN.
This practice is part of a series of battlefield mistreatment, recorded on video by Ukrainian surveillance drones or Russian military, who later circulate on social networks.
In this video, two men are stripped and kept in a storage tank. “It’s time to feed the animals!” Says a voice. Telegram
As Moscow forces slowly advance, but seemingly relentlessly, inside Ukraine, the videos paint a dark picture of the reality of life within the Putin army – a service that is estimated that tens of thousands of Russian men have fled from the beginning of the large -scale invasion in early 2022.
In the video, apparently filmed last winter, man is shown in a great plan, tied to a tree.
The man claims to be from Kamensk-Pararsky, a city in downtown Russia, on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains.
He explains that he fled his post after being frightened by a Ukrainian drone that flied the place. A soldier who reached him made a proposal, he says.
“Let me do you ‘300’ to withdraw you,” the soldier told him, using a term that designates a wounded Russian army fighter.
Then came the something for whom.
“If you give me a shot, I take a shot.”
The man tells the House that he refused, but that the other soldier fired on it, making him easily capturable by the men of his unity. With a thick cable holding it to the tree, he looks nervously to the skies, while a voice behind the chamber tells him a drone on his way.
“If the drone arrives here, it will drop everything on you,” he teases his voice.
At this point, the video ends and the soldier’s destination is not clear.
Putin desperate appeals
Like many armies, Russia does not speak publicly about the desertion in the ranks. But the channels of social networks – usually telegram – give us an idea of the profound anxiety and despair of many soldiers and their families and give us an idea of the reasons that led some Russian military to give up.
“Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich,” begins a video posted on Telegram by a man identified as Yuri Duryagin, which is equivalent to a personal appeal to Russia’s Putin President for help.
Duryagin says he was fighting in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk, where the bad equipment and the lack of ammunition made only 32 men in his company survive a certain attack. Usually a company can have up to 150 elements.
Putin tells him that he received less than a fifth of his salary, but adds that his superiors tell him that he would be losing his time to complain.
When deaths occurred on the battlefield, these were often covered to avoid paying compensation to the mourning families.
“I personally saw comrades die before my eyes. They were killed. Parents were trying to get information about their family members and loved ones, but they told them that the person was missing,” he says.
Perhaps the most serious of all, is that it accuses a commander of shooting at those who refuse to participate, saying that “they leaned people to the wall because they simply refused to face a machine gun.”
‘They will all be dead in a week’
“Violence is what keeps the Russian army and what keeps it together,” Gorn Sverdlin, founder of Get Lost, said, an organization that helps Russian men desert or prevent recruitment. He told CNN from Barcelona, in Spain, where the organization is currently headquartered.
Get Lost helped 1,700 people to desert since it was launched six months after the large -scale invasion, Sverdlin says. The total number of Russian army desertions is difficult to determine, but Sverdlin estimates that it is in the tens of thousands.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US -based analysis group, cites what is said to be disclosed data from the Russian Ministry of Defense that suggest that the number could reach 50,000.
In another video, a man is tied to a tree with a rusty bucket on his head. After the bucket is removed, it is repeatedly killed in the face. Telegram
Many deserted before they are highlighted, complaining of poor formation that lasts only one to three weeks, Sverdlin said, while those who give up during the detachment often describe a culture marked by nihilism.
“Your lives are worth nothing to your commanders. For Russian officers, losing a tank, losing a vehicle, is much worse than losing, say, 10 or 20 people,” Sverdlin explained.
“We often hear from our clients that officers tell them that they will all be dead in a week. The officer will find another unit, so it’s not a problem for them.”
For Russian soldiers convicted of desertion, the penalty may go up to 15 years in prison. But the videos that circulate on social networks indicate that ad hoc punishments are also widely applied to the ground, with the same goal of determining others to escape.
In one of them, a man behind a chamber approaches a large metal deposit with a ladder on the side.
“It’s time to feed the animals! Those who tried to escape! Let’s find out what they are doing,” he hears in the man’s voice, which opens the container’s lid to reveal three men in naked trunk, hidden inside.
“Do you hungry?” Slips the voice. “Do you want a cracker?”
One of the men nod and a cookie is crushed in his extended hands, which he eats quickly.
Another video shows a man shrunk on the floor while repeatedly killed in the face. It has an orange belt tied to one of the ankles. The other end is attached to a jeep, which starts at all speed, turning around a field, dragging the man behind him, in a known punishment like “the carousel.”
In another, a man is tied to a tree with a rusty bucket on his head. After the bucket is removed, it is repeatedly kicked in the face before, apparently they urinate on it.
CNN contacted the Russian Ministry of Defense to comment on the punishment inflicted on the deserters in the videos, but got no response.
According to estimates of Western governments and academic institutions, the number of Russians killed or injured since February 2022 is about one million. NATO’s secretary general said that, in 2025, 100 000 Russian soldiers died.
Ukraine has its own morals and desertion problems, but there is a feeling that is probably much less prevalent among its ranks: the lack of belief in the cause.
Sverdlin says this is what hears most often from the Russian soldiers that helps to desert.
“Some of them tell us just ‘I don’t want to die here’, but I would say that the most common words are ‘it’s not my war, it’s not our war … I don’t realize that the ray we’re doing here’.”
