Under the Weight of Cargo 500
At the end of 2024, two lists of alleged deserters appeared online at once — in the Russian army, they are called Cargo 500 . IStories verified this data and found that at least 49,000 servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces have been declared deserters or as having gone AWOL. Whether these leaks can be trusted, who is recognized as a deserter, and why the number of those wanted for fleeing the front may exceed 50,000 people over the course of the war? Where did the data on deserters come from?