Ukraine's disappearing army

Up to 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers are feared to have vanished from the ranks while training in France.

Fifty-six troops from the 155th Mechanised Brigade are confirmed as having gone awol, but officials are investigating the whereabouts of hundreds more, said The Guardian. Ukrainian news website Censor.net has claimed that as many as 1,700 soldiers have fled the brigade without going into combat.

The unit’s former commander, Colonel Dmytro Riumshyn – recently removed from his position – faces 10 years in jail for failing to carry out his official duties and to report unauthorised absences. However, the French exodus is part of a much wider desertion crisis thinning Ukraine's ranks.

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'Abandoned their posts'

The number of deserters in Ukraine's army has become "unmanageable", said Svitlana Morenets in The Spectator. Officially, some 90,000 soldiers have deserted – almost half of them in 2024 – but the unofficial number is "much higher". "Entire units have abandoned their posts," said The Associated Press in late November, "leaving defensive lines vulnerable and accelerating territorial losses."

Although the exact figure is a military secret, even Kyiv officials "concede the number is large", said The Guardian. Desertion is usually punishable by between 12 and 15 years in prison, but to lock up thousands of men when they are "badly needed on the front line" would be "a mistake", said Morenets. Ukraine passed a law last year "forgiving soldiers who went AWOL for the first time" as long as they "agreed to come back", but this has been "calamitous" for discipline – "essentially giving men permission to flee".

"Some take medical leave and never return", said AP, while others "clash with commanders and refuse to carry out orders, sometimes in the middle of firefights". Deserters often "keep a low profile" after abandoning the army, said The Guardian, but others "live and work openly".

'People are exhausted'

Ukrainian officials recognise that desertions are "understandable", because "tired troops" have "served for months without a proper break", said The Guardian. Olha Reshetylova, Ukraine’s commissioner for protecting service members' rights, said it's only "natural in a situation where you’ve had three years of major war" for soldiers to desert. "People are exhausted," she said. "Their children are growing up without them" and "relationships get broken".

But there is no avoiding the gravity of the problem. Just as Russia's ranks are "swelling" with highly paid contractors and "fresh North Korean reinforcements", Ukraine's forces are "thinning fast", said Morenets, and "desertions are adding to crippling manpower shortages".

Meanwhile, one Ukrainian commander predicted the trend would only get worse as conscription squeezes Ukrainian society and "there are more and more people who are forced to go", said France 24. Is there any way to stem the flood of deserters? "We just have to end the war," he said.