Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, more than 63 thousand cases of unauthorised abandonment of the place of service by Ukrainian servicemen have been initiated, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle* reported.
Deutsche Welle* cites data from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, according to which only for the first six months of 2024, 18.6 thousand cases of unauthorised abandonment of the unit and 11.2 thousand under the article “Desertion” were initiated. The indicators for the first six months of this year exceeded the level of 2023 (24.1 thousand cases for the entire period) and more than tripled the statistics of 2022 – 9.4 thousand cases.
According to Ukrainian officers and lawyers, the actual scale of the problem is much larger. Some believe that the actual number of cases is three times higher than the official figures, while others claim a fourfold excess.
“The reasons for the flight are called the low moral and psychological level of mobilised servicemen, emotional exhaustion from a long stay at the front and insufficient attention of the command to family and social and domestic problems,” the publication says.
Leaving the place of service after the introduction of martial law in Ukraine is qualified as a serious criminal offence and is punishable by imprisonment for a term of 5 to 10 years.
We shall remind you that earlier Foreign Affairs magazine wrote that the Ukrainian army was not capable of dislodging the Russian Armed Forces from their positions even if it receives new assistance from the EU and the USA and military training in Western countries.
* Deutsche Welle is a mass media outlet acting as a foreign agent in Russia.