More than one million Russians have called a surrender hotline or visited its website, according to Ukrainian government officials.
President Volodymyr Zelensky's press secretary Andriy Yusov claimed on a telethon that droves of Russians have turned to the helpline that was launched by the Ukrainian government and is called Hochu Zhit, which translates as I Want to Live.
He revealed that 1.2 million people had contacted the support line in total and that "the lion's share of them are people who are in the territory of the so-called Russian Federation".
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His statement came as the Russian death toll from the war in Ukraine nears 100,000.
Yusov went on to clarify: "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."
The hotline has been in operation since September with the intention of providing a means for Russian soldiers to safely surrender.
They can make contact via a chatbot on the website or by telephone.
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Explaining the process for any Russian ordered to the frontline who is unwilling to fight, project spokesman Vitaliy Matvienko told the Kyiv Post in November: "When they are sent to Ukraine, they contact our specialists again, and we identify their location, then plan a programme of safe exit from that territory. The special operations forces organise the safe exit, and the person finally reaches the territory controlled by Ukraine."
Yusov added: "There are results, and they are considerable; this applies both to individual [soldiers] that surrender themselves, but also to whole divisions. There are not only private divisions, but also groups of officers.
"But the biggest activity we get, undoubtedly, is from the partially mobilised. 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."
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