Many Russian soldiers unwilling to fight in Ukraine are deserting and then turning themselves in, seeking prosecution and imprisonment to avoid being sent back to the front. As the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reports, some are even hiring lawyers to persuade investigators to open criminal cases against them, though that doesn’t always work.

President Putin’s mobilization decree remains in effect, making all military contracts open-ended. Soldiers can leave the front only by turning 65, receiving a medical discharge, or being sentenced to prison by a court. For most, the third is the only realistic option.

Military commanders want deserters returned to the front, Mediazona reports, so criminal cases against them are frequently never opened. In many regions of Russia, apprehended deserters are sent to special holding points, where they can be held indefinitely.

At those holding points, soldiers who have fled either wait for a court verdict (most often a suspended sentence), after which they are sent straight back to their unit, or are pressured to return to the front voluntarily. Sometimes, Mediazona reports, they are forcibly returned to their units. In nearly all cases, they end up in assault units.

In recent months, a new category of lawyers has emerged in Russia specializing in exactly these cases — helping clients secure actual prison time on charges of desertion or unauthorized abandonment of a military unit. Even with such specialists, Mediazona reports, only two out of 10 soldiers actually receive a real sentence.

“In practice, what happens is that even when a criminal case has been investigated, commands simply take those soldiers to the front, and the investigator suspends the case on the grounds of the defendant’s participation in the SVO. The investigative actions are suspended, and the soldier is quietly taken away,” one lawyer told Mediazona.

The key, the lawyer said, is whether the military investigator has a personal stake in pursuing the case. Like their civilian counterparts, military investigators work under a “quota system” that rewards strong case-closure numbers. Lawyers specifically seek out departments with poor clearance statistics, where investigators are eager to take on desertion cases and have an interest in seeing them through to trial and a prison sentence.

When a conviction is secured, it tends to be severe. Desertion during a period of mobilization carries a sentence of five to 15 years in prison; unauthorized abandonment of a military unit carries up to five years. The shortest sentence handed down to soldiers in these circumstances, Mediazona reports, has been three years and 10 months.