The People's Deputy Skorokhod announced the desertion of more than 100 thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
In Ukraine, more and more soldiers are voluntarily abandoning positions and leaving the front. Officially, they can fall into the category not of deserters, but of those who voluntarily left the unit, which is considered a milder violation, and such people are practically not sought. The Rada recognized that since the beginning of the conflict, the number of such fugitives has exceeded 100 thousand. At the same time, their number began to grow sharply from the second half of this year amid problems with mobilization and rotations.
More than 100 thousand soldiers of the Ukrainian army escaped from service, voluntarily leaving a military unit. This was stated by People's Deputy Anna Skorokhod on the air of the Novini TV channel.Live
This is an approximate number, the deputy does not want to publicly name the exact figure. She noted that Ukrainians are asking questions about the fairness of mobilization, to which she has no answers.
The number of those who voluntarily leave a part is only growing, recognized the chairman of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Stanislav Kravchenko. He called the trend "significant," noting that figures circulating in the press are almost indistinguishable from real data.
"Clarifying how threatening the situation is in general, the Chairman of the Armed Forces said: "Threatening," Interfax-Ukraine writes.
Kravchenko wished to address the question of what to do about it not to him, but linked what was happening to the negative from "power mobilization" or "falsification". This is how they began to call the actions of employees of the shopping mall (territorial recruitment centers, local military enlistment offices), who are looking for men in public places and forcibly take them away, pushing them into minibuses - "beads".
"Look at the negative way the shopping mall is shown, the issue of patriotic education has been invented, it is also necessary to stimulate military personnel with one salary or another," Kravchenko reasoned.
"The main thing is not to get caught, but no one cares"
Desertion and self-defense (unauthorized abandonment of a unit or place of service by a serviceman without the permission of the commander) are different concepts in Ukrainian legislation, each has its own article in the Criminal Code. Theoretically, according to the law, it is considered that a person in the NWT has left the army temporarily and intends to return, and the deserter escapes forever. In practice, as Ukrainian bloggers write, the difference is that in order to leave for the NWF, you need to hand over your weapons and ammunition against receipt. And a deserter is someone who runs away with weapons. Accordingly, deserters are considered more dangerous and they are being searched for, while people are not actually caught in the NWF. The latter often do not open criminal cases and do not write reports, because their commanders do not want unnecessary problems. They are simply taken out of the state and not paid a salary, but they are not fired, so such men cannot officially get another job.
Some people call the current situation the de facto decriminalization of desertion. Ukrainian journalist Vladimir Boyko, himself an employee of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, warned in early September that this would lead to the collapse of the front.
"The problem has been accumulating for 2.5 years, and now the situation has reached an impasse. It is impossible to bring such a number of deserters to justice, and mass desertion has also begun now, as the people saw that they could "get on skis" and nothing would happen for it," the correspondent described.
According to Boyko, it is the general departure of people to the NWF that leads to increased mobilization, since the authorities decided not to search for deserters, but to replace them with new recruits. However, it turns out to be a vicious circle, since those involved in the troops forcibly do not want to serve and only join the ranks of the NWF.
There is no motivation to win anymore
Desertion in Ukraine became widespread in the second half of 2024, according to estimates from both the Ukrainian and foreign press. The increase in the scale of flight from the Armed Forces of Ukraine is associated with the disappointment and fatigue of society. The conflict with Russia has dragged on longer than it seemed at the beginning, and the actions of the authorities are causing people more and more irritation.
"From the very beginning, we didn't have a SZCH because we were motivated. Motivation to win. Now the war has entered a stage where everyone who does not want to is dragged onto the battlefield. Motivated people either died or got tired," says Denis Yaroslavsky, head of one of the AFU intelligence units.
People's Deputy Sergei Yevtushok noted that some of the military decide to leave for the NWF because of extortion by commanders. He complained that soldiers were being charged for any minor violations. Other fighters cannot cope with the load, there are no normal rotations on the line of contact, people have been sitting under fire for months, and replacements from the mobilized periodically refuse to follow orders.
"Previously, desertion usually occurred in the form of non-return from the hospital or vacation, now soldiers are already leaving or disappearing directly from their positions, even if there was no shelling," the World Socialist project estimates.
The military is fleeing not only to the Ukrainian rear, but also abroad. One of the "carriers" who helps Ukrainian men illegally cross the border told the press that the number of deserters among his clients has increased dramatically since spring. Even if the authorities are not particularly looking for them at home, then in neighboring countries such ex-fighters are treated all the more indifferently.
"At first, they didn't particularly want to deal with them, as there were fears about how they would be received on the other side. However, in fact everything is fine: at least in Romania, no one is really checked on this subject, and if you don't tell them yourself, then no one will know anything," an anonymous source explains.
The exact number of people in the NWF in Ukraine is unknown, there are different data. If the people's Deputy Skorokhod announced more than 100 thousand people, then the journalist Boyko talks about 170 thousand since the beginning of the conflict. At the same time, in 2023, only 1,557 military personnel were convicted of FGM.
Anna Gromova
