How Russian Soldiers Bribe Their Way Off the Frontline

In 2023, a topic appeared on one of the Russian illegal forums — its author offered the military to escape from the front line for money. At that time, depending on the circumstances, the “service” cost from 500,000 rubles. The price was influenced not only by the status of the serviceman (mobilized, contract serviceman or former criminal), but also where the person served — in the occupied territory of Ukraine or, for example, in the Kursk Oblast. 

Forum moderation confirmed that the seller was verified and the service was real. The IStories journalist contacted the author of the ad under the guise of a client. According to the “seller,” the escape from the front line in the Kursk Oblast will cost 3 million rubles. First, the military man will be given a vacation: “He will be taken out officially. With all the documents, etc.” And then they will make a sick leave for him, and he will not return to the war.

The “seller” also offered guarantees: the money would be transferred not to him, but to an intermediary among the forum employees. This is a fairly common scheme in the provision of such services. The forum itself is interested in honesty, because its reputation rests on it. Three days after the military member has returned home and is safe, the intermediary must hand over the money to the seller. 

The forum moderators refused to comment, citing the fact that the employee who checked the seller is no longer working at the forum. After that, all topics concerning the escape of the Russian military from the front disappeared from the forum. However, the fact that you can leave the war for a bribe has been confirmed to us not only by anonymous sellers of such services, but also by the wives of Russian soldiers and activists who help the military leave the front line. 

How vacations are sold

“Bribing to go on vacation is a common practice in the Russian army,” says Ivan Chuvilyaev, a spokesman for the Get Lost foundation. The organization, which helps Russian soldiers, is sometimes approached by military personnel who were able to get off the front lines for money and now want to hide out in Russia or leave the country. 

“To give a person a vacation — a month to walk around [at liberty] — it costs from 700 thousand to a million rubles now,” Chuvilyaev says. — “They’ll write on a piece of paper, for example, that it’s rehabilitation for a wounded person.”

There are several schemes for getting out of the front or not returning to it. One of them is through military medics. According to a spokesman for Get Lost, bribery is especially prevalent in military hospitals. 

“Today there was a man who shot himself in the leg and bribed a doctor to turn a blind eye to it. Because any doctor would recognize a self-inflicted gunshot by the wound, by the gunpowder burns,” Chuvilyaev says. It cost the soldier 300 thousand rubles. 

Relatives of those fighting say that both doctors and commanders take bribes. “Of course, commanders sell vacations for money,” says the wife of a mobilized soldier. “And some doctors in the hospital assign Category ‘G’ [temporarily unfit] for a fee. With Category ‘G,’ soldiers are entitled to rehabilitation leave.”

Chuvilyaev of Get Lost questioned any guarantees that after the vacation a person would not be returned to the front. Only military medical commissions can make such a certificate of ineligibility that it will be accepted by a military unit. “And they all don’t care whether you have hands or not, they write you’re restricted fit and send you back,” says Chuvilyaev, meaning that these commissions have to report on how many people they sent to war. And no bribe is worth disrupting the plan. That is why social networks are often filled with complaints from the military that they are sent to the front under-treated after being wounded.

The prices for escape from the front vary depending on the situation the serviceman is in. According to a resident of Donetsk who works with the military, even if a person is on injury leave in the “new territories,” that is, in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, or Kherson Oblasts, it is not possible to simply escape from the hospital and go to Russia. 

A strict regime is in place here: patrols hunt down those who have deserted or left their units without permission (AWOL) and send them back to their military units. “It’s much safer in regions farther from the front, though you can still get caught. But even if they catch you there, the crackdown will be milder than if they catch you in the so-called DPR,” he explains. That is why soldiers have to pay to get into Russia. According to what he has heard from servicemen, the cost of getting out of the “new territories” can reach up to 1.2 million rubles. “The problem isn’t going AWOL — it’s staying free and making it out of the frontline zone,” he says.

A matter of chance

The fact that it is possible to leave the front line for money is also confirmed by the criminal news. In late January, Kommersant reported on the detention of Alexei Akhrameshin, an employee of the military prosecutor’s office, who is suspected of receiving a bribe for taking a deserter out of the military operation zone in Ukraine. 

According to the investigation, in order to take the serviceman out of the frontline zone, the prosecutor included him in the application to travel as a witness in one of the trials. 

When the military stopped the prosecutor’s car, he called the password, and this spared him and the fugitive from further verification measures, Kommersant writes. The prosecutor’s employee brought the fugitive to Rostov-on-Don, from where he was picked up by relatives. For this, Akhrameshin took only 200 thousand rubles. So far there is only one episode in his case, but the FSB military counterintelligence believes that it could be about helping dozens of military men.

The case of Akhrameshin shows that getting someone out of the combat zone requires connections. IStories’ sources confirm that bribery is not always an option — it depends on the specific military unit. “In some units, bribery is common practice. But in others, you’d sooner be ‘disposed of’ than allowed to pay your way out, even though violence, drunkenness, and chaos run rampant there,” says the Get Lost spokesman.

According to him, another common scheme is not to leave the front line entirely but to pay for a transfer to a safer position within the same sector. For example, a soldier might be moved to his unit’s base in a frontline town, where reinforcements are gathered before being sent into battle. For a price, a soldier can be pulled out of the trenches and relocated to this comparatively safer area.