 22,000 Russian soldiers appealed to Ukraine to surrender. As Russia's 21-month war in Ukraine drags on, reports are appearing that the numbers of its mobilized soldiers seeking to desert are surging. The Moscow Times quoted the Georgian-based group Idite Lesom that aids troops attempting to leave Putin's army, saying it has experienced an 89% increase in requests for assistance over the past few months. The group's name translates literally from Russian to go through the forest, although among troops, it is more often used as a curse roughly equivalent to get lost. Grigori Svedelin, founder and leader of the group, said that between June and August it had received 305 requests for help but between September and November, this number had almost doubled according to the Kiev Post. He told the news outlet that most requests had come from those who had been wounded, treated in hospital but then made to return to the front line. Sergei Krivenko, director of the human rights group Citizen.army.law, echoed this saying a year has passed since the beginning of mobilization. If some people still had hopes that they could go home after a certain period of service, there are no such illusions now. He noted that, servicemen see that there is no rotation, that even seriously wounded men are being sent back to the front after being hospitalized. The Ukrainian equivalent of Idite Lesom, the government-sponsored Kotru Zit, also indicated that it has seen an increasing number of Russian troops trying to get out. A spokesman for the project, Vitaly Matvienko, told the Medusa website in September that in the year Kotru Zit has been working, it was launched to coincide with Putin's 2022 mobilization announcement. The project has received over 22,000 applications from Russians wishing to voluntarily surrender to Ukraine. Thank you. Thank you.