Number of Russians willing to surrender increased in January

The I Want to Live project has received more than 7,600 applications from Russians and residents of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine for the opportunity to surrender since 15 September 2022. [I Want to Live project is a hotline for receiving appeals from Russian servicemen in Ukraine – ed.]

Source: Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War

Details: In January 2023, the number of requests increased by almost 50%. 

In January, 5.6 million users visited the website of the I Want to Live project, 4.7 million of whom are from Russia and 350,000 from Ukraine (mainly from the temporarily occupied territories). 

Residents of Moscow, St Petersburg, Krasnodar, Rostov and Nizhny Novgorod oblasts of the Russian Federation are most interested in the possibility of voluntarily surrendering. 

Among the residents of Ukraine, the overwhelming majority are residents of Donetsk Oblast and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. In particular, 59,000 users visited the project website in January from Sevastopol alone.

According to Andrii Yusov, a representative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, the Russian Armed Forces and their family members, as well as citizens who are threatened with mobilisation, mostly apply to the I Want to Live project .

Quote from Yusov: "10 operators are involved in the project's hotlines 24/7. Every day, they receive 50-100 calls and requests for the project's chatbot, Telegram and WhatsApp messengers, provide an algorithm for voluntary surrender and information about security guarantees for prisoners. 

As for those Russian servicemen who do not use the proposal of the I Want to Live project, their fate is reflected in the daily reports of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine."

Details: The coordination headquarters states that the detention of prisoners of war who voluntarily surrendered through the I Want to Live project is carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. At their own request, prisoners can return home as a result of an exchange or apply for asylum in Ukraine and some EU countries.

Russian servicemen and their relatives can find out how to surrender by calling the hotline of the I Want to Live project at +38 044 350 89 17 or 688 (only for Ukrainian numbers). In Telegram and WhatsApp, project operators answer the following phone numbers: +38 095 688 68 88, +38 093 688 68 88, +38 097 688 66 88.

As the Russian authorities are trying to block access to the official website of the I Want to Live project, all information about the surrender is also available in Russian on the pages of the project on Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and on Viber.

For pre-surrender, you can use the Telegram chatbot.

Reference: I Want to Live is a state-owned project designed to help the military of the Russian and Belarusian armies safely surrender. The project was launched in September 2022 by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which operates with the support of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine and Ukraine Defence Intelligence. 

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