MOSCOW, December 30. /TASS/. More than a thousand soldiers desert from the Ukrainian armed forces every day, or one person every 1.5 minutes, Ukrainian journalist Vladimir Boyko reported.
"More than 1,000 servicemen desert from the Ukrainian army every day, that's one person every 1.5 minutes. This means the army is gone, and it can no longer be rebuilt - the point of no return has been passed," he wrote on his Facebook page (banned in Russia, owned by the Meta corporation, which is designated as extremist in the Russian Federation).
He believes the reason for the mass desertion is the unwillingness of ordinary soldiers to die for privileged Ukrainians in the Ukrainian armed forces, such as Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, the frontman of the band Okean Elzy, who became a captain and tours abroad, or Vitaly Shabunin, the head of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, who, according to him, found a job at a Kiev bar ("gendelik") selling alcoholic beverages.
"There are not just tens, but hundreds of thousands of people like Shabunin and Vakarchuk in the Ukrainian armed forces: with an army of millions, there are no more than 50,000 fighters actually at the front. Therefore, every concert by Vakarchuk or Zhadan (Sergey Zhadan, a writer and musician who also joined the Ukrainian armed forces - TASS), every video by Shabunin "about the fight against corruption" <…> not only demoralizes the army, but also adds several thousand deserters," he added.
Speaking about the abandonment of the command post in Gulyaipole, Zaporozhye Region, by a battalion of the 102nd Territorial Defense Brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces, Boyko noted that the unit had been "long since wiped out" and was suffering from a shortage of personnel. They wanted to withdraw it to a rearward area, but the command prohibited this due to difficulties at the front. "Due to the catastrophic situation at the front, a new order was issued on the eve of December 18: no rest, everyone was to be sent back to their positions. When the soldiers learned of this, they simply got into their cars and drove home," the journalist wrote.
Generally, territorial defense battalions within the Ukrainian armed forces are unable to fight independently, as, according to Boyko, they lack heavy weapons and armored vehicles. They are often assigned to other brigades. The journalist emphasized that territorial defense battalions are "the most exhausted and war-weary units of the Ukrainian armed forces," and Ukraine’s position at the front depends on their combat readiness. "Combat losses, the territorial defense manning by a leftover principle, and mass desertion of the infantry are the three components of Ukraine’s defeat," he concluded.
Desertion from the Ukrainian armed forces
TASS previously reported that, based on estimates from the State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine and the Prosecutor General's Office for the period from January to October, the total number of soldiers who deserted or went AWOL from the Ukrainian armed forces was over 200,000. Precise data for November and December is unavailable because Ukrainian law enforcement agencies stopped publishing data on the number of recorded cases of desertion and AWOL due to the "record-high" figures in October - roughly 19,600."
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.