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 with preventing desertions from the centre, which was surrounded by a 3-metre (9.8 ft) high concrete wall covered with barbed wire.

Warhammer 40K is not an instruction manual, guys