MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. Over 200,000 servicemen have deserted or gone AWOL from the Ukrainian armed forces in 2025, about a quarter of its total strength, according to TASS calculations.

Ukrainian authorities stopped publishing desertion data in November, after monthly cases hit a record of around 19,600 in October. The monthly average was approximately 17,000-18,000 at the year’s beginning, rising by 1,000 per month on average over 10 months.

Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov stated on December 18 that up to 30,000 desert monthly. Kiev representatives have also confirmed that desertion remains an issue without providing exact figures.

TASS calculations based on Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation and Prosecutor General data show over 176,000 desertions from January-October. Factoring monthly growth, the full-year total is at least 214,000, possibly over 230,000.

Kiev currently characterizes the strength of its armed forces at about 800,000.

Ukraine introduced martial law and general military mobilization on February 24, 2022, extending them several times since then. Currently, men from 25 to 60 years of age are subject to mobilization in Ukraine. That is after the minimum age for mobilization was lowered from 27 years starting from April 2024.

A law went into effect on May 18, 2024 to tighten mobilization rules. Videos of forced mobilization surface on social networks almost daily, showing military enlistment officers grabbing men on the streets, in cafes, gyms and other public places. Occasionally, beatings of people in military enlistment offices come to light.

As mobilization-age men seek to avoid ending up at the battlefield, they try to flee the country in a variety of ways, sometimes at a risk to their lives, or purchase certificates purporting to identify them as physically disabled.