A new report claims that more than one million residents of the Russian Federation have called a Ukrainian surrender hotline or visited its website as Russia’s invasion losses near a grim milestone.
According to the Ukrainian news outlet Pravda, government press secretary Andriy Yusov claimed during a recent telethon that over 1.2 million people had called a surrender hotline run as part of the country’s project, “Hochu Zhit,” which translates to “I want to live,” or visited its corresponding website to inquire about their options. He further claimed that “the lion’s share of them are people who are in the territory of the so-called Russian Federation.” This influx of appeals comes as Russia’s deaths in Ukraine are nearing 100,000.
“Currently these are not intents to surrender, but inquiries to find a way for themselves and their relatives to save their lives in this bloody unjustified war of Putin’s occupiers against Ukraine,” Yusov said.
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The “Hochu Zhit” project was launched on September 18 by the Ukrainian government as a means to help Russian military members safely surrender to them. It currently consists of a chatbot that current or prospective soldiers can use to declare their desire not to fight Ukraine, and a telephone hotline they can then use to discuss the process of surrendering once they are in Ukraine.
“They save their lives, and fewer will be at the front,” project spokesman Vitaliy Matvienko told the Kyiv Post last month. “When they are sent to Ukraine, they contact our specialists again, and we identify their location, then plan a program of safe exit from that territory. The special operations forces organize the safe exit, and the person finally reaches the territory controlled by Ukraine.”
When Matvienko spoke to the Post, roughly two months after the project’s launch, he claimed that around 3,500 appeals had been started via the chatbot or hotline, indicating a major spike in usage as of Yusov’s comments. The spokesman did not indicate how many soldiers had completed the process of surrendering.
Yusov further claimed during the telethon that over 100 people a day are using the project’s resources. He also claimed that the results have been “considerable,” though he also did not indicate how many successful surrenders the project has facilitated.
“There are results, and they are considerable; this applies both to individual [soldiers] that surrender themselves, but also to whole divisions,” Yusov said. “There are not only private divisions, but also groups of officers. But the biggest activity we get, undoubtedly, is from the partially mobilized. These are the people who do not understand what they are doing in the war against Ukraine and what is the reason for them being here.”
Newsweek reached out to Ukrainian officials for confirmation of statistics related to the project. Newsweek also reached out to foreign policy experts for comment.
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