Nearly five months into the largest war in Europe since World War II, a growing number of Russian soldiers like Kaminsky are refusing to fight, demanding to return home, or outright not going to Ukraine in the first place. Russian rights activists say hundreds, possibly thousands of troops are balking at orders to deploy, to keep fighting, or to remain on the battlefield without rotating out or home.

Of the 78 soldiers from Kaminsky's unit who have disobeyed orders, some have been ordered held in a makeshift brig for days, he said.

The refusenik troops add to Russian commanders' headaches as they struggle to replenish spent and exhausted units across the roughly 480-kilometer (300-mile) front line stretching from east of Kharkiv in the northeast down to Kherson in south-central Ukraine.