LONDON, January 31. /TASS/. Ukraine’s armed forces are facing "a desertion crisis," The Guardian reported.

Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have abandoned their units, the newspaper wrote. While the exact number is a military secret, The Guardian continued, officials describe it as large. Ukrainian troops have been on the frontline for months without a break, they explain.

The Ukrainian military leaders have lately been complaining about a complicated operational and strategic situation in the combat zone. The critical shortage of manpower in the Ukrainian army has become a serious issue that the authorities have been struggling to resolve by increasing mobilization. Defection, sometimes on a mass scale, has been a separate problem. At that, Kiev is trying to shift responsibility for the failures of its troops onto its Western partners, accusing them of untimely or inadequate weapons supplies.