Kyiv, Ukraine – Tymofey’s palms and fingers are still dotted with lilac, half-healed scars left by the razor-sharp barbed wire on the walls around the military training centre he busted out from six months ago.

The lanky 36-year-old office worker in Kyiv told Al Jazeera he has done it twice after being forcibly conscripted in April.

He said he chose to desert after realising how perfunctory and ineffective his training was for real combat, and that he would inevitably become a front-line stormtrooper with no chances of survival.

“There’s zero training. They don’t care that I won’t survive the very first attack,” Tymofey said, referring to the drill sergeants who were training him in April after police rounded him up in central Kyiv.

He claimed that his trainers were mostly preoccupied

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