LUGANSK, October 17. /TASS/. Out of some 30,000 soldiers who replenish Ukraine’s armed forces every month, 98% get killed within months of service or sustain severe injuries, and mass desertion, too, has been noted, military expert Andrey Marochko told TASS.
In September alone, some 20,000 Ukrainian militants left their military duty, he said, citing Ukrainian servicemen active on social media. "And there is another figure: there have been 160,000 [of desertions] since the start of this year," he continued.
And those forcefully mobilized do not tend to survive along the line of engagement, with 98% of them sustaining severe injuries or dying on the front lines in the first couple of months, Marochko added, citing data from the enemy side.
According to him, the Ukrainian army has been trying to address troop desertion by recruiting young "highly-motivated citizens" from Ukrainian nationalist battalions as noncombatants. Also, Ukrainian barrier troops are manned with foreign mercenaries "who have no moral or ethical principles" and obey any orders from their commanders, the expert noted.