Pro-Ukraine Freedom of Russia Legion Appeals to Russian Troops to Defect, Surrender

Freedom of Russia Legion, a volunteer battalion affiliated with Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (HUR), has called for Russian troops to surrender or defect to the Ukrainian side to fight “for a normal future for Russia” amidst Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

In a Telegram announcement on Friday, Aug. 16, the group criticized the Russian elites, including Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

“Your political instructors, sitting in the warm rear, insistently recommend not to surrender, but to blow yourself up with your own grenade. But hundreds of Russian soldiers ignore the criminal order, choosing to live rather than die for a new colonel’s medal or another Gerasimov mansion.

“This decision is a healthy alternative to thoughtless death,” the update reads.

On Aug. 15, Ukraine captured more than 150 Russian prisoners of war in its largest single operation to date in the war as largely inexperienced conscripts were thrust by Moscow into Kursk to contain Kyiv’s offensive.

The group also included a link to its recruitment bot on Telegram in its call for Russian troops to join their cause.

“We are ready to communicate with anyone who expresses a desire to turn their weapons on the Kremlin,” it read.

In March, the group led a series of incursions into Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine in response to the presidential elections in Russia.

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Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has captured hundreds of enemy soldiers in one of Russia’s worst defeats of the war. Now Kyiv thinks it has negotiating leverage to bring its own fighters home.

In 2022, Kyiv Post interviewed a fighter from the Freedom of Russia Legion who said he “believes that only an armed uprising can bring freedom to Russia.”