‘People simply didn’t know how else to save themselves’

Many Russian soldiers and civilians are willing to pay large sums of money to avoid being sent to the front in Ukraine. But amid mounting military losses and a shortage of new recruits, bribing your way out of the Russian army is getting increasingly difficult. On top of paying off doctors and commanders, some active duty soldiers resort to injuring themselves in the hopes of getting discharged. Military enlistment offices, meanwhile, have their own corruption schemes for those seeking to avoid conscription. Demand for evading army service has also given rise to a thriving black market, where draft dodgers can purchase forged documents, “fake surgeries,” and even get help fleeing the country — unless they fall prey to scammers or the security services, that is. Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova investigates the price Russians are willing to pay to avoid going to war and how the authorities are cracking down in response.

‘I thought about using a grenade’

Nikolai (name changed) was in the hospital when he first began thinking about how to avoid going back to the front. A Russian soldier on active duty, he had just narrowly survived a combat mission in Kurdyumivka, a frontline village in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that’s now under Russian control. 

The mission took place in late May 2024. Nikolai’s assault group had been tasked with making their way to the line of contact, which ran through the village’s industrial zone. As Ukrainian drones buzzed overhead, they dashed from basement to basement, trying to reach a Russian “strongpoint” manned by another battalion that had been fighting in the area for six months. 

The “strongpoint” turned out to be an underground pipe. Likely intended for draining wastewater, it measured 1.5 meters in diameter (roughly five feet) — and the soldiers sheltering inside looked like “skeletons covered in skin,” Nikolai recalls. “[They were] dirty, emaciated. They had survived [by drinking] the stagnant water that flowed into the pipe; they brewed cigarette butts in it instead of tea. Occasionally, they’d run out to a field and steal grain. They ate the coffee we’d brought with us with spoons and poured our entire packet of sweetener into their mouths.” 

The Russians had been unable to rotate the soldiers or deliver them provisions: drones circled overhead constantly, and Ukrainian fortifications were “so close that you could hear voices,” Nikolai recalls. His assault group found themselves trapped too: their first escape attempt ended in a mortar attack that injured Nikolai and killed one of his fellow soldiers. “[It was] the first death I saw,” he says. 

The mortar fragments hit Nikolai below his shoulder blade. Soon after, he felt his arms go numb. That same night, a strange gas seeped into the pipe, which Nikolai claims “almost blinded” him (Meduza cannot confirm what the gas was). An hour later, a Ukrainian drone dropped anti-tank mines on their position. “The blast waves passed through the pipe in such a way that it sent us flying,” Nikolai recalls. 

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In the morning, rainwater began flowing into the pipe. Having been told drones don’t operate in bad weather, Nikolai and his comrades made a break for it. But when the clouds cleared, a Ukrainian kamikaze drone caught up with them; it exploded just as they were climbing down into a basement, walling them in. “We were just lucky that the Ukrainians left us there unattended,” Nikolai says. “They decided that we’d never get out.” And yet, they managed to dig their way through the rubble. 

At the hospital, Nikolai learned that his left arm was seriously injured and at risk of becoming paralyzed. But his commanders didn’t discharge him from military service, telling Nikolai, “Your right one is still more or less fine — you’ll still be useful!”

That’s when Nikolai began devising a plan to sustain a shrapnel wound serious enough to get him sent home. “At first I thought about [using] a grenade,” he says. “You can hide around the corner of a building, toss the grenade, and expose only your leg to the blast — so as not to kill yourself accidentally.” 

Nikolai and his friend — who was in on the plan — ultimately deemed the grenade option too dangerous. Instead, he began working on a homemade “shrapnel cartridge” for a Kalashnikov, filling a bullet casing with gunpowder and the tips of rusty nails. “Now I have 12 pieces of these ‘fragments’ in my leg, and it’s festering,” he says.

Shooting each other in the leg was “very scary — but not as scary as staying there,” Nikolai says (referring to the front). The homemade bullet hit him in the calf. “I lifted my trouser leg and there was blood, [muscle] spasms, and my whole leg was covered in bumps,” he recalls. “But it was a good argument for evacuation to Russia.” 

So as not to arouse suspicions about their “shrapnel wounds,” Nikolai and his comrade threw a grenade into their dugout and then radioed it in as a Ukrainian drone attack. Nevertheless, their story wasn’t particularly believable. “People aren’t fools. A self-inflicted wound like that leaves traces of gunpowder on your legs,” Nikolai explains. The soldiers began to negotiate with the regiment’s medics as they were being taken to the hospital. “We admitted right there in the car that we’d shot ourselves and something needed to be done,” he recalls. 

The medics scolded Nikolai and his friend for failing to warn them in advance. Then, they pulled over at an ATM. The two soldiers withdrew 300,000 rubles each (about $3,600) as a bribe. The examination at the hospital “went smoothly,” Nikolai recalls, but instead of being sent to Russia, he was transferred to a military medical company in the Luhansk region for treatment. (His friend was soon sent back to the front.) 

“Leaving the front is really hard. There’s not enough people, so they don’t let anyone go,” he explains. “Only the very seriously [injured].” 

In the end, Nikolai made his own “connections” at the hospital. “I was told to contact the surgeon in civilian clothing who sometimes showed up at the medical company,” he says. Nikolai paid the man 800,000 rubles (about $9,700) and two weeks later, a military medical board approved his transfer to a hospital in Russia. “I never learned the surgeon’s name,” he adds.

In Russia, Nikolai was pressured to return to the front. He fled the country with the help of Get Lost, an organization assisting Russian deserters. 

Nikolai still walks with a limp and has trouble using his left arm. In total, he had to pay 1.1 million rubles (more than $13,000) in bribes to escape the front — the equivalent of six months salary for a contract soldier. 

The price of unfitness

When President Vladimir Putin declared a “partial mobilization” in September 2022, all Russian servicemen lost their rights of discharge. As a result, many are willing to injure themselves and pay bribes to doctors and officers to escape the front. 

One popular way out is bribing combat medics. “The guys announce over the radio that they are ‘three hundreds’ [Russian military jargon for wounded soldiers] and then the medics, by prior arrangement, inject them with painkillers, cut open their leg, and stick a small [piece of] shrapnel in there [so it will show up on an X-ray],” Nikolai explains. “This costs 300,000 rubles [about $3,600].”

Soldiers can also be discharged from active duty if they receive a diagnosis while at the front — be it a new illness or one a military medical board failed to take into account in its assessment. “Such unreported illnesses often surface in the line of duty. For example, chronic [conditions] enter acute phases,” confirms the rights group First Line, which works with Russian soldiers. 

If there’s no such diagnosis to be had, graft is always an option. In exchange for a bribe, soldiers can obtain a certificate of unfitness. Nadezhda Nizovkina, a human rights activist from Buryatia, knows of at least ten cases where “previously undetected diseases were ‘uncovered’ or existing ones were characterized [as grounds for] unfitness.” Another source from a Russian NGO that studies the military told Meduza about cases where “families paid for their sons to be ‘infected’ with hepatitis” so they’d be declared temporarily or permanently unfit for military service. (Those deemed temporarily unfit receive a six-month deferment.) 

However, due to a shortage of manpower at the front, being discharged from the Russian army due to illness is becoming increasingly labor-intensive — even for those who are willing to pay “huge amounts of money,” Nikolai says. “Until around the start of 2024, it was possible to get discharged through a mental hospital or hepatitis [diagnosis], for example. This cost 1.5 to 2 million rubles [about $18,000 to $24,000]. But then all these rackets were shut down and they started to double check all such hepatitis [cases].” 

Apparently, soldiers can also pay to get transferred to the rear — a “service” available on the darknet for as little as $280. But whether this is a real option or a scam remains unclear. 

For an even larger sum — ranging from 200,000 to three million rubles (about $2,400 to $36,000) — “you can get kidnapped from a military base and delivered to another part of the world,” says Ilya Shumanov, the former executive director of Transparency International Russia, who investigated this illicit market. According to iStories, the price of escaping the front line depends on where the soldier in question is deployed (for example, whether they’re serving in an occupied area of Ukraine or in Russia’s Kursk region). 

The darknet also offers less obvious ways to escape army service. One ad claims that for 29,000 rubles ($350), a soldier can “re-register an existing bank account in the U.K.” Since it’s illegal for Russian soldiers to have foreign bank accounts, this could be grounds for dismissal. However, as the ad warns, “the decision is at the commander’s discretion.” 

The opportunity for graft presents itself immediately after new recruits are brought to army distribution points. According to Nizovkina and Artyom Klyga, a lawyer with the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, this is where many soldiers get drawn into corruption schemes: to avoid ending up in assault detachments, they pay off the “buyers” recruiting personnel for various units.

And this is just one branch of the system of corruption on the Russian side of the front. Soldiers can buy themselves medical leave, rotations, and even exemptions from assault missions. Verstka journalists found nearly 200 convictions handed down for bribery in the Russian army over the past three years. (Novaya Gazeta Europe and iStories have reported on this too.) 

Naturally, civilians trying to evade the draft resort to bribery, as well. 

‘Don’t want to risk your life? There’s a way out’ 

According to Darya Berg, the head of relief and evacuation at Get Lost, the most popular “service” on the draft dodging market is a fake military exemption. Known as a “white ticket,” the military typically issues these ID cards to those exempt from service for various health reasons. 

Before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, buying a “white ticket” in Russia’s regions could set you back 90,000 to 250,000 rubles ($1,100 to $3,000). According to rights activists and the Russian tabloid Baza, however, finding the “right doctors” to deem you unfit for service costs more in Moscow — between 200,000 to 450,000 rubles ($2,400 to $5,500). 

After the start of the full-scale war and particularly after the September 2022 mobilization, these prices “rose three or even ten-fold,” anti-corruption expert Ilya Shumanov says. “In early 2023, a military ID granting a Category G [temporarily unfit] deferment went for a million rubles or more on the dark web.” An ID attesting to the completion of compulsory military service costs even more — between two and three million rubles ($24,000 to $36,000). 

In the fall of 2022, the Russian darknet was flush with ads offering to help people “escape from army slavery” and obtain “a military ID with a beautiful disease.” One read: “Don’t want to risk your life? There’s a way out. No need to sit in fear in a rented apartment, flee to Mongolia on foot, or sail with a friend across the Bering Strait. Just contact us.” The most expensive offering Meduza found on darknet forums promised buyers the designation of “limited fitness” for the price of seven million rubles (about $85,000). 

According to Berg, prices have skyrocketed not only because “people simply didn’t know how else to save themselves” but also because conscripts are subject to more frequent checks and the doctors responsible for screenings are under more intense scrutiny. “All this has become more dangerous for military enlistment officers, who have been intensively weeded out by FSB military counterintelligence,” Shumanov explains. 

According to Sergey Krivenko, who heads the rights group Citizen.Army.Law., one regional enlistment office can make up to 10 million rubles (more than $120,000) in bribes during a single conscription season. (Russia holds conscription drives twice a year, in the spring and the fall.) As Shumanov explains, this sum gets divided up among “a whole group of intermediaries.” This includes everyone from enlistment officers to the doctors who conduct military medical examinations. “It’s a system where everyone is in on it,” says lawyer Artyom Klyga. 

Another “service” that’s popped up since the 2022 call-up is placement at a company whose workers are exempt from mobilization. For a bribe of up to two million rubles, you can get on the payroll at a secure facility somewhere in the Urals, an IT company in Moscow’s financial center, or, according to rights activist Nadezha Nizovkina, at Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service or the Ulan-Ude Locomotive Plant. However, according to the rights group First Line, this option has “partially lost relevance” since amendments to the list of reserved occupations entered into force in March. 

The next turning point for the evasion market is expected to come when Russia launches its unified digital draft registry — especially since those issued electronic draft notices will be forbidden from leaving the country. Klyga predicts that this could spawn a whole new range of blackmarket services, like offers to remove names from the unified registry or lift exit bans. “These scammers will tell [people] how easy it is to hack the registry,” he speculates. 

‘A concrete diagnosis’

Darknet users and Telegram chat groups also sell paperwork that provide grounds for deferment or exemption from military service, including falsified medical certificates, doctor’s notes, and full patient records. Here are a few examples of what’s on offer:

• Patient records showing you are “temporarily unfit” for military service — $350
• “An HIV certificate with a QR code and inclusion in the [federal] register of infected persons” — 33,000 to 125,000 rubles ($400 to $1,500)
• A medical certificate for viral hepatitis — $150 to $300 (the sellers “recommend hepatitis C” to mitigate the risk of being deemed “unfit in peacetime”) 
• Bronchial asthma or arterial hypertension — 30,000 rubles ($360)
• Tuberculosis — 12,000 rubles ($145) 
• A forged disability certificate — available on the darknet for $1,500

There’s also a black market for documents proving that a draftee is the primary caregiver for a disabled relative. (These reportedly cost anywhere from 40,000 to 320,000 rubles — about $480 to $3,800 — but Meduza couldn’t find any current ads.) According to one blackmarket source, there was even a service offering fictitious marriages to women with disabilities, but it disappeared after the first mobilization wave. 

“All of the above are just [examples of] buying grounds for deferment or exemption. But you’ll still have to prove it and ‘defend your rights’ at the enlistment office,” explains a rights activist from First Line. Some black marketeers say this outright: “Certificates aren’t a silver bullet — they’re just insurance. Please come up with your own backstories.” 

Meduza’s black market source, who referred to himself as a “paid draft evasion consultant,” also offers his clients “fake surgeries” that make them eligible for medical exemptions. “For example, esophagus surgery can lead to a very long deferment,” he explains. “If a surgeon [is willing] to take on the risks, the person just gets a stitch. They cut open the tissue, sew it back up again, and the guy can’t be mobilized or join the army for a long time.” 

Other options include purported gallbladder, gallstone, or hernia “removals,” the source claims. “You can ‘remove’ a groin hernia even if there isn’t one,” he explains. “It’s just put down in [the patient’s] chart, then allegedly removed, leaving a scar as evidence. And a medical certificate is issued.” 

This “consultant” also helps clients “develop the clinical presentation” of psychiatric disorders: 

‘Scammers who prey on fear’

The shadow market for draft evasion is about 90 percent scams, Ilya Shumanov says. One black marketeer even admitted as much, saying, “It’s just scammers who prey on fear.” 

“When a person is frightened by a draft notice, he’ll race to hand over any amount of money. First he’s asked to transfer 200,000 [rubles] and send photocopies of documents. The trust index rises, but then the process drags on and on,” the source explains. “And then there’s a childish scheme, alleging that ‘the courier was already on the subway, bringing you the documents, but he was arrested in some raid — send us more money so he’ll be released.’”

Any draft evasion scheme can turn out to be fraudulent. Darya Berg recalls cases of men reaching out to Get Lost after they’d been scammed. “I came across a story where they feigned free legal consultations for conscripts — they just had to enter their email addresses. That’s how they collected a database that was then used to send out phishing emails,” Shumanov says. Other scams target conscripts’ parents, he adds. “They try to convince [them] that ‘your son is in danger’ and extort money for his ‘rescue.’” 

Some schemes are promoted under the guise of human rights or anti-war activities. The Telegram channel Pacifist, for example, positions itself as a platform for “legal aid” and “analysis of Russian militarism.” However, Meduza learned from a conscript that the channel’s administrators send out private messages to subscribers offering to make “your personal file disappear from the military enlistment office and for them to forget about you forever.” When this conscript wrote to Pacifist in 2024, he received a “crazy pricelist with prices up to 500,000 rubles [$6,000].” The administrator later deleted the messages, he said. 

Posing as a draftee’s relative, Meduza’s correspondent also reached out to Pacifist for help and received a pricelist in response. The channel’s administrator, who identified himself as a military lawyer named Dmitry Antonov, offered to have a “loyal enlistment office” register the “draftee,” deem them unfit for service, and then remove their name from the military’s records. “We help in any way we can,” the administrator wrote. “This is one of the rare cases where corruption works to benefit ordinary people.” 

According to human rights activists, scammers also prey on men who are trying to flee the country — as do the Russian security services, who collect their personal data and then use it to launch criminal cases against draft dodgers. For those banned from leaving Russia, evacuation abroad is one of the most expensive and hard-to-get services on the black market.

But one anonymous Telegram channel, Safe Harbor, claims to take on even the most difficult cases — i.e., active military personnel — completely free of charge, and even promises “full coverage of living expenses in Serbia or Turkey” for six months. After looking into Safe Harbor, the investigative media outlet Agentstvo concluded that such support is beyond the means of any organization helping deserters. “This all looks extremely suspicious,” agrees Berg. “Supporting people who have already been evacuated simply isn’t possible for a rights group.” Safe Harbor’s administrators did not respond to Meduza’s questions.

One former soldier who initially appealed to Safe Harbor and then managed to escape the front without their help is convinced that the Telegram channel is linked to the Russian security services.

“They were trying to get information out of me, not help [me]. They were aggressive, you could feel it even over text messages,” he says, recalling his interactions with the channel’s administrators. “They immediately asked me to send [a copy of my] passport. When I started dragging my feet, they began to intimidate me, saying that if I didn’t send the documents now, I’d get caught in Russia and thrown in a pit where I would die.” When the soldier informed Safe Harbor’s administrators that he’d crossed the border, they reproached him. “They freaked out as if they had missed me,” he says.

‘More of a trap than a bribery system’

The Russian authorities are trying to crack down on the draft dodging market. In April 2024, Moscow transferred all conscript records to a Unified Conscription Point (Ediny Punkt Prizyva in Russian, or EPP for short), which has essentially replaced district enlistment offices, breaking established corruption chains. Rights activists also note that after the EPP opened, raids targeting conscripts in Moscow became harsher. 

A Moscow black marketeer, who Meduza contacted through an intermediary, initially offered to resolve “the issue of exemption from service” via a district enlistment office and even claimed that an enlistment officer in the Novye Cheryomushki district would do it for a million rubles ($12,000). However, the seller soon backed out, explaining that “now all [issues related to conscription] are decided by the EPP.” 

This case may only indicate that the EPP “has yet to establish a bribery system,” one human rights activist told Meduza. “The EPP has a unified records management system,” explains Sergey Krivenko of Citizen.Army.Law. “So it’s much easier for the [security services] to monitor it and it’s much more difficult to reach an agreement with some of the officials there.” 

The aforementioned unified draft registry will likely serve as another way for the authorities to combat draft evasion. Once launched, it will collate data from a wide variety of government agencies, including military enlistment offices, the Federal Tax Service, the Interior Ministry, and the property registry (Rosreester). Presumably, this will provide enlistment officers with up-to-date information on conscripts. According to Krivenko, it will also help the authorities curb graft: 

In other regions of Russia, the security services have taken control of the draft evasion market and turned it into another method of army recruitment. In Buryatia, for example, you can buy a forged medical certificate for 90,000 rubles ($1,090), local rights activist Nadezhda Nizovkina says, but “some doctors have started cooperating with law enforcement agencies and military enlistment offices to identify draft dodgers.”

“In other words, now it’s more of a trap than a bribery system. There is less and less pure corruption and more tricks,” she explains. “A person orders himself a fake medical certificate, and they get him on the hook and threaten to open a criminal case — all for the sake of forcing people to sign a contract and go to the front. Apparently, there aren’t enough people willing to go voluntarily.” 

High-profile criminal cases involving military enlistment officers, bribe-taking doctors, and enlistment office staff are under investigation in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladimir, Samara, Sochi, and Gelendzhik. Some of those who spent years helping their compatriots evade military service have even enlisted in the army to avoid prison time.