Members of the Ukrainian army’s specialised troops are deserting from their units because AFU commanders are transferring them to infantry amid a shortage of personnel, Bloomberg news agency reports.
Earlier, the British newspaper Financial Times wrote that the number of deserters in the AFU for ten months of 2024 has almost doubled compared to the total statistics for 2022 and 2023, in 2024, 60 thousand criminal cases were brought against them. According to an unnamed Ukrainian general, infantry and assault brigades have the highest desertion rate.
“Ukrainian commanders are increasingly sending specialised military personnel such as air defence operators to the front line as infantry … It’s another reason to leave,” Bloomberg said in a report.
As one of the AFU soldiers told the agency, such a situation happened to his fellow soldier. The latter, being a qualified artilleryman, was transferred to infantrymen allegedly for a month.
“Having learnt that his new position became permanent without his knowledge, the artilleryman went AWOL,” – notes Bloomberg.
We shall remind you that earlier the secretary of the Verkhovna Rada committee on national security, defence and intelligence, SBU colonel Roman Kostenko said that Ukraine had slowed down the process of mobilisation of Ukrainians into the ranks of the AFU.
