Russian authorities announced on Wednesday that they had shot dead a soldier who had deserted a military base, several media reporting that he had left his unit deployed as part of the offensive in Ukraine.
“Dmitry Perov, wanted for having voluntarily left a military unit without permission, has been found and eliminated,” the government of Lipetsk region in western Russia said in a statement on Telegram.
This source did not specify where the man was killed and under what circumstances.
The local branch of state media VGTRK reported that the 31-year-old soldier had deserted the “special military operation area in Ukraine” and was wanted in both the Voronezh and from Lipetsk.
According to this media, citing anonymous sources, the man could have been armed with a submachine gun, grenades and was trying to go to his home village in the Lipetsk region.
In recent months, several cases of desertion of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have been reported.
On Wednesday, the “Kommersant” newspaper reported that a criminal case had been opened against eight soldiers accused of having left in December, with their weapons, a base in the Ukrainian region of Lugansk and having traveled by taxi to in Russia.
In early December, Russian security forces also arrested a fugitive accused of having shot and wounded a policeman and suspected, according to the media, of being a deserter from the paramilitary group Wagner.
After the launch of the offensive in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed amendments providing for up to 10 years in prison for soldiers who desert or refuse to fight.
Faced with major setbacks on the Ukrainian front, President Vladimir Putin in September ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine, prompting tens of thousands of Russians to leave the country to avoid being drafted.