Russian Soldiers Drank Urine, Considered Cannibalism Before Surrendering to Ukraine

Andrei Galkin, a 30-year-old from Russia’s Altai region, had just been released from prison when local police coerced him into signing a military contract with the Ministry of Defense, Galkin recalled in an interview shared by Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project on November 18.

Despite his warnings that he had a cognitive disability and had been registered as disabled since childhood, officers told him not to worry and promised he would work “in construction” behind the front lines.

“They said it’s all nonsense, everything will be fine, don’t worry,” he said. “I told them I was mentally challenged, on record with a narcologist. They said it didn’t matter. I passed the medical board—got all the stamps: ‘fit,’ ‘healthy.’ That same evening, they sent me off.”

It quickly became clear he wasn’t going to be a builder. Upon arrival, a commander ordered him into a storm unit—Russia’s assault infantry. On his very first mission, Galkin spent over a week in a frontline position without food or water.

According to his account, he and his fellow Russian troops were so desperate they drank their own urine and even contemplated eating the corpses of dead comrades that littered the area. Some, he said, considered suicide.

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So when Ukrainian forces showed up, Galkin said their arrival felt like salvation. “They promised us we’d live, and they kept their word,” he said. “They didn’t beat us. They treated us like human beings.”

The “I Want to Live” project—run by Ukraine’s military intelligence service to help Russian soldiers safely surrender—said Galkin’s story is far from unique. Russia, it said, has routinely sent people with mental illnesses, disabilities, and terminal diseases into combat.

“In Putin’s GULAG -state, where brute force rules and law is meaningless, there’s no place for humanity,” the group wrote. “The motherland doesn’t care who it kills—or how.”

Earlier, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency released evidence of cannibalism within Russian forces, based on an intercepted conversation between Russian soldiers.

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