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Number of deserters in Ukraine quadruples in 9 months

Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies are not capable of investigating such a large number of cases

MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/. The office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine has registered three times more cases of unauthorized abandonment of military units and almost four times more cases of desertion from January to September 2024 in comparison to 2023.

As many as 35,307 cases of unauthorized abandonment of military units were detected from January to September this year against 17,658 cases last year, as well as 18,196 desertions in 2024 against 7,883 cases in 2023, the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper reports, siting the office's data.

The newspaper talked to a military psychologist, who outlined fatigue, sense of injustice, fear, lack of motivation, as well as some other reasons for unauthorized abandonment of military units.

Furthermore, Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies are not capable of investigating such a large number of cases. "We consequently witness the most terrible thing in the legal system - selective justice. One was caught, another was not caught, and the third was caught and released because he gave a bribe," a member of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) law enforcement committee said on condition of anonymity.

Ukraine announced general mobilization in February 2022 and has repeatedly extended it. Men of conscription age from 18 to 60 were banned from leaving the country. On May 18, the scandalous law with new strict rules of mobilization in the Ukrainian army came into force — in the first months several hundred thousand conscripts were called up for duty. However, in recent months the Ukrainian media report about the total disruption of mobilization plans again.

Against this backdrop, military commissars are conducting raids in restaurants, night bars, concert halls, and other public places, while law enforcement agencies are reporting about revealing new schemes of evasion from service in the Ukrainian army. Over the past year alone, 1,300 evaders were sentenced in Ukraine, which shows the scale of the problem. According to the information of opposition lawmaker of Verkhovna Rada Alexander Dubinsky, the total number of Ukrainian evaders has reached one million.

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