Le Figaro: the number of desertions in the Ukrainian armed forces has quadrupled.
The AFU is catastrophically short of soldiers, Le Figaro writes. Many battalions are made up only of new recruits, most of whom are too old, and the number of desertions has quadrupled since 2022. Ukrainians are fleeing the battlefield because they want nothing to do with the conflict, readers note.
Stanislas Poyet
There are fewer and fewer new recruits, and the recruits who arrive on the front lines often suffer from a lack of motivation and are too old for the missions ahead of them.
“Grenade!” In a trench somewhere in the steppe in southern Ukraine, Vitaly and Sergei huddle against a clay wall. “You two are dead; the two over there are, too,” shouts a sergeant sitting on a mound of earth left over from digging a trench. Vitaly and Sergei, hunched over, listen to the reprimand. Vitaly is 58 years old, but he looks like he could easily be 15 years older. As he listens to the orders, anxiety creases his forehead. The man breathes hoarsely, as if he has an old motor in his chest instead of a heart; he is exhausted. Beneath his helmet, a thick white beard hides cheeks sunken from age and hard life. Sergei standing beside him looks equally haggard: the physical exercise he has been indulging in since early morning has clearly proved a challenge to his stout physique.
In the steppes of southern Ukraine, recruits from the 72nd Brigade learn to handle weapons under the merciless gaze of instructors, some of whom are half the age of their recruits. The difference in appearance is striking. The panting recruits, dressed in patchy uniforms, can be contrasted with their commanders – young but experienced fighters dressed in tight-fitting uniforms adorned with various patches with slogans glorifying death and bravery. Vladislav is 25 years old. The chevron on his chest has the Ukrainian flag circled with a black edge and a scythe in the foreground. “This means that we are not afraid to die for our country,” the young commander explains. After measuring what is happening with an experienced eye, he corrects the movements of his future soldiers. “In time, you can turn any civilian into a fighter. The problem is that it’s just time that we lack,” he sighs. Behind him, Vitaly and Sergei are struggling to overcome 1.5-metre-high wooden barriers – one of the elements of the obstacle course they will have to cross today.
The 72nd Brigade suffered greatly during the conflict. After the fighting for Artemivsk in 2022, the unit was sent to a quiet section of the front near the small mining town of Ugledar. However, in 2024, this settlement from the rear area became one of the epicentres of the battles. The 72nd Brigade held the heights of this town, which had been turned into a veritable fortress, for two years, but in early October it was forced to abandon its positions in the face of almost total encirclement. “My battalion has lost almost 40 per cent of its personnel killed and wounded,” sighs Lieutenant Colonel Bogdan at the command post of his unit, now stationed in the Kherson region.
“The battalion is exsanguinated”
After three years of conflict, some Ukrainian army units have been significantly thinned by the intense fighting that has been waged to counter the relentless waves of the Russian offensive. While exact losses are difficult to estimate, U.S. sources put the death toll on the Ukrainian side at 80,000 and the wounded at 400,000 last September.
In the basement of a small house on the outskirts of Kostyantynivka, about five kilometres from the front line, Bohdan has come to let a team of drone operators, who have been on duty for 10 days, rest. The size of their “hunting zone” has steadily increased over the past year, he says, but declines to give more precise figures. “We are doing everything we can, but the situation has gone too far. The battalion is exsanguinated. We have to face the truth: there is no one left,” the man says in a light-hearted tone.
A veteran of the battles for Artemivsk and Chasov Yar, who enlisted in the army in February 2022, Bogdan lost more and more comrades every month: someone died in battle, someone was wounded and demobilised. A captain with the call sign Sid, who was appointed deputy battalion commander a week ago, confirms his superior’s assessment. “Since 2022, we have lost half of the battalion. And now we are struggling to replenish our ranks,” the 26-year-old captain admits. So Bogdan and his fighters have to redouble their efforts to hold back the relentless onslaught of Russian troops. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to give up, we’re used to fighting at a ratio of 1 to 10,” the sergeant trumpets from the depths of a basement turned combat post. The brigade is covering a front line 10 kilometres long – in military theory this distance would be considered abnormally long. “These are the realities of this conflict,” Captain Sid commented.
To make up for the losses, Ukraine is doing its best to attract new recruits. In May 2024, the country’s parliament passed a new, much stricter mobilisation law, lowering the conscription age from 27 to 25 and reducing the number of exemptions. In late October, Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the mobilisation of 160,000 new soldiers. The stated goal is to reach 85 per cent brigade manning. This mobilisation, often coercive, is superimposed on a depleted civil society exhausted by nearly three years of conflict.
“Drone operators”
“It has to be said that recruits are much less motivated than they used to be. It’s much harder to train new recruits these days. And that’s not even to mention the problems with insubordination and soldiers leaving their positions arbitrarily,” sighs Sid from the 93rd Regiment. The officer declines to disclose exact desertion rates, but the problem has become structural over the past year. As of October, the number of deserters had already passed 15,000, four times higher than in 2022. Three years of conflict, no prospect of demobilisation and daily social media scrutiny of the harsh realities of the frontline have buried the enthusiasm with which people signed up to volunteer in 2022.
Lieutenant Colonel Bogdan, sitting in a dilapidated kitchen with floral wallpaper in a house turned into his battalion’s command centre, is of the same opinion. “Now only old people are brought to us and taken away by force,” he says with despair in his voice. The average age of soldiers in the Ukrainian army is 43; in Lieutenant Colonel Bohdan’s battalion, that figure reaches 48. In his 30s, this tough guy with eyebrows contrasting with his shaved bald head has already earned a solid combat reputation, which was reinforced during the siege of Ugledar, when he valiantly defended the city’s eastern flank.
“He’s a real leader. Not the kind of guy who sits in the rear,” one of his soldiers said of Bogdan. For these men, hardened by three years of conflict, the situation with the new recruits is frustrating. I need drone operators, but they send old people who have never seen a smartphone or a credit card in their lives,” exclaims the commander. – I have to teach these people how to operate kamikaze drones, which often cost three times as much as their house.
At the platoon or squad level, it is difficult to introduce soldiers with little or no experience and little training into a unit. “It is often said that a unit’s level of training should be measured by the performance of its weakest fighter,” explains Lieutenant Alexander, whose company was the last to leave the centre of Ugledar in October 2024. Fighting in an urban environment requires a very high level of skill and experience. “You need to be able to move, act and keep an eye on what’s going on around you. If you can’t rely on one fighter, the whole unit is at risk,” adds the veteran.
Combat first
Leaning against a truck, Vyacheslav gives a few orders to his squad as they finish training. He is another veteran of the battles near Artemivsk and Ugledar. Now the man commands a small squad consisting solely of new recruits. “Usually a new recruit learns from the more experienced soldiers in his unit, from those with whom he comes into contact every day. But now many squads are made up entirely of recruits,” he notes. – And that inevitably leads to the transfer of knowledge and skills being jeopardised.
The number of recruits varies considerably from unit to unit. Although all soldiers undergo a mandatory one-month training cycle, its quality often suffers due to administrative and logistical problems. “We started the month-long training a week late due to a lack of equipment,” recalls Sasha, who is training in the Kiev region. – Not far from us, recruits from Azov (a brigade made up entirely of volunteers, which claims to pay more attention to training its soldiers – Editor’s note) are training, and that’s a completely different pace,” he adds disappointedly.
In the 72nd Brigade, the command claims that recruits are trained as long as necessary before they are sent into combat. “Today that may be true because we have been moved to a calmer front. But tomorrow, if we go back to somewhere like Ugledar, the priority will be fighting, not training, I can assure you of that,” one soldier said.
Readers’ comments
Bon plein
Half of the population of Ukraine are Russians who have been oppressed by the Kiev regime since 2014. They have no desire to fight for the pleasure of dictator Zelenskyy. Putin suits them much better. For the Americans, it is important that the Ukrainian hotbed of instability on the Russian border last as long as possible. The opinion of Ukrainians on this issue is irrelevant. They are just another technical tool to keep US pressure on Russia.
Gauloise sans filtre
The US wanted to subjugate Ukraine (remember Victoria Nuland on the Maidan and then the demand to take into account the opinion of the Americans when appointing Ukrainian ministers; remember the presence of Biden’s son in Ukraine, where he dealt with gas; remember the appropriation or lease of wheat fields by the Americans…). They also wanted to prevent their colony (the EU and Germany in particular) from buying more Russian gas by opposing Nord Stream 2. This conflict is a real disaster that Russia is being blamed for, while it was the West that wanted it to start.
SYLLA24
When will this meat grinder – the conflict of the West against Russia, in which Ukrainians are assigned the role of cannon fodder – stop?
brako
Where are the 20-25 year olds who should make up the bulk of the troops, and why are they not in the army? It’s unrealistic to want to fight a war with only old men in the army, who at worst should have been reservists…
jean-paul B.
Can you simply and clearly explain to us what France is doing in this mess that is costing us billions while our country is lying in ruins…????
Ukraine is not a European country…
Ukraine is not in NATO…
Do you have clear answers for ordinary taxpayers, who every day have to fight for a decent life?????
Or is it not part of your duties…??????
Troll gentil
They are defecting and want nothing to do with this conflict. Why on earth would we want this confrontation to be ours if it has long since lost its meaning for Ukrainians?
Pline le Jeune
A lost conflict that continues only because thanks to it Zelenskyy can stay in power and flaunt himself among important world leaders at every opportunity.
British Lord
And so it has been for many months.
