 Interest in desertion is clearly rising in Russian army. The Russian anti-war Go Through the Forest project has declared February the 29th the day of the deserter to change the image of those who flee from the ranks of the Russian army in Ukraine from traitors and weaklings as the Kremlin wants people to believe and to show that leaving the ranks is an action of bravery and love for one's country. Paul Goebel, specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia, said this. He recalls that Grigory Sverdlin, who organized a homeless shelter in Russia before fleeing the country after the start of the war, is the founder of the Go Through the Forest project. He says his group has been able to help 520 deserters of whom approximately 70% have fled abroad while the remainder are mostly in hiding inside Russia. Paul Goebel says that, since the start of the war, his group has received inquiries from more than 24,000 soldiers of which 2086 involves issues of desertion and the illegal crossing of the Russian state border. The highest number of such desertion questions, 284, came in January 2024. A year earlier, his group received only 28. Perhaps significantly approximately half of these potential deserters are men who signed on as professional soldiers and have either been horrified by what is going on at the front or are outraged that they have not been given the leave that they were promised and that Russian law requires. The activists also provide statistics on the types of crimes those the authorities catch with charges short of desertion more common because they are easy to prosecute and get convictions. The FSB and the military command they add now try to keep those who try to desert in their units because they need the men and because where punishment is informal and often brutal. Those interested in desertion face far greater obstacles now than they did a year earlier. The activists say and that fact may depress official statistics somewhat but interest in desertion is clearly rising as Russia's war in Ukraine enters its third year. The Russian army in Ukraine now worse than in hell. Although the Russian authorities work overtime to hide it, brutality by officers and soldiers in the Russian invasion force in Ukraine is now so bad that some veterans say things are worse than in hell. The product they believe of the entrance of so many former criminals into the ranks and their propensity to follow the moors of Russian streets. US expert Paul Goebel said this. According to him, this is the conclusion of Olesya Gerasimenko, of Vertska media draws on the basis of conversations with veterans, their relatives and their defenders after the last three months of the fighting and the picture she paints is truly disturbing and a sign that unit cohesion is weakening. The closer Russian forces are to the front lines and the rarer leave has become the more officers and even some soldiers feel they can get away with anything she says. Confident that no military prosecutor will appear and that they therefore have the power to act as they like up to and including torture, rape and murder. According to the investigative journalist, the problem of extrajudicial punishments, bullying and non-regulation relations has intensified and the longer the forces are on the front lines, the more serious things are becoming. Those with a criminal past are leading the way in applying the rules of the streets but regular officers aren't far behind, soldiers say. Both groups view those who are weaker than they as somehow less than human and therefore appropriate targets for their anger. Some Russian soldiers are shooting themselves to escape and others, Gerasimenko says, are surrendering on occasions when there was no need for that only to escape the hell of service in the Russian military. Russians sent 70-year-old T-55 tanks to attack Rubbertyne. It ended badly. After a brutal four-month defense against a Russian force ten times its size, the Ukrainian army's 110th Mechanized Brigade last Friday finally quit the ruins of Avdeevka in eastern Ukraine just northwest of Russian-occupied Donetsk, according to Forbes. The 110th Brigade fought until it ran out of ammunition. It is noted that sensing weakness as the 110th Brigade retreated, the Russian army attacked in several sectors along the 600-mile front of Russia's two-year wider war on Ukraine. But not every Ukrainian brigade is as tired, outnumbered and amostarved as the 110th is. Ukrainian forces not only held the line last weekend, they inflicted heavy casualties on the overconfident Russian brigades and regiments including at least one unit that tried to assault Ukrainian positions in the south in unupgraded 70-year-old T-55 tanks. That unit, apparently from the 42nd Motor Rifle Division, got wrecked as it crossed from west to east, a mile of flat terrain separating Russian lines from positions held by the Ukrainian army's 65th Mechanized Brigade in Rubbertyne, one of the largest settlements the Ukrainians liberated last summer. The 65th Brigade threw everything it had at the Russian assault group, which numbered dozens of 41-ton four-person T-55s, 13-ton MT-LB armored tractors with room for 13 people and 13-ton BMP fighting vehicles with space for 11, firing cluster shells and anti-tank missiles and flinging explosive first-person view drones. The 65th Brigade defeated the attack and exacted some revenge for the men and women of the 110th Brigade who died defending Abdiivka according to Forbes. As the dust settled, open-source analyst Andrew Perpetua counted all along the front line 28 damaged, destroyed and abandoned Russian tanks and fighting vehicles. He counted just six damaged, destroyed and abandoned Ukrainian tanks and fighting vehicles.