Gazeta.ru, a pro-Kremlin outlet (and it has been for quite a while), published a highly sensational report on the mass desertion trials of contract soldiers refusing to go fight in Ukraine.
Case files, videos, photos, real surnames.
The amount of evidence of this state crime—the illegal deployment of our soldiers to take part in an undeclared war—is now so overwhelming that it can no longer be concealed, and it is spilling over into media outlets that could still have been called independent about three years ago.
It has been many months already, and yet it still reads like madness and nonsense, like some deranged editor’s mistake: our soldiers are fleeing military service because they are being forced to go fight ... against Ukraine. But no, it is not a mistake—it really is a war against Ukraine.