Ukraine: the wave of desertion turns into an avalanche against the background of the US elections

This article was sent to the WSWS by Ukrainian underground workers in Assembly.org.ua website. It provides further evidence of the ongoing disintegration of the NATO-backed Ukrainian army in a war that has already claimed the lives of half a million or more Ukrainian workers and youth. You can financially support the work of these journalists by subscribing this is a link.

In Zaporizhzhia, it was reported about the graffiti “Zelensky – executioner”. (Photo: Ukrainian journalists)

On the eve of the elections in the USA, the flight of the personnel of the Armed Forces from the middle of 2024 took on an avalanche-like character, threatening to leave the regime without an army in the near future. According to the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine, from January 2022 to September 2024, almost 90,000 criminal proceedings were opened based on such facts, most of which were initiated at the beginning of the current year: 35,307 out of 59,606 cases related to voluntary abandonment of a part (Article 407 of the Criminal Code) and 18,196 out of 29,521 cases of desertion (Article 408 of the Criminal Code). The largest number of desertions were recorded in Zaporizhia (6144), Kharkiv (5771), and Donetsk (5318) regions, as well as in Donetsk (8574), Dnipropetrovsk (3308), Zhytomyr (2433), and Lviv (2170) regions. leads in cases of voluntary abandonment of units (Ukrainian: SZCH). These are only the cases to which the authorities reacted. However, out of them, only 4,698 cases of voluntary departure and 442 cases of desertion reached the court. During the same period, 2,592 and 414 cases were closed, respectively.

According to these two articles alone, in October 2024, nine thousand and forty-eight criminal proceedings were registered in Ukraine. For comparison, in January 2024, only 3,448 criminal proceedings were opened. And in general, from February 2022 to November 1, 2024, 95,296 criminal cases have already been opened. (One brigade in the Armed Forces of Ukraine has from 3 to 5 thousand people). Although both of these articles may concern not only the Armed Forces, but much less is heard about escapes from other structures of the Armed Forces, such as, in particular, our source did, who deserted from the State Border Service.

Starting from August, information appears from time to time about people who escaped from the units before being sent to the Kursk operation (Kursk is a border region of Russia with Ukraine, since August its part is occupied by Ukraine). For example, the following was reported about the 82nd Airborne Assault Brigade, which participated in last year’s southern counteroffensive and is considered elite and one of the best equipped units.

On August 10, I found out that my friend is in the SZCH (voluntarily leaving a part). They were supposed to go to Kursk (region), (and) he says that more than 40 people left everything and went home. He says: “I was given some kind of mailing, I looked and realized that it was a one-way ticket.” He does not live in the place (where he is officially registered), he got a job, how exactly he got out, I don’t know, he doesn’t really want to talk about it. He has a normal medical form, he was a sergeant in the army, on draft. He was taken near the house, but he did not move, and then I learned that he was at home. (At first) 1-2 people every day, and then, when they found out that they were going to Kurshchyna, many fled (…) I’m sorry, but I can’t provide more information. I don’t think he will either. Such times,” a resident of Khmelnytskyi region told us on October 9.

Those who are sent to NATO training grounds also desert en masse. User Ruslan wrote about this on September 13 in the UFM open Telegram chat for mutual assistance when crossing the border.

The main thing is to have a foreign passport with you; 29 people left our battalion in Poland. It all depends on the situation, at the first opportunity (they will escape), they will be there for a month, there will be many chances. (They put on) civilian clothes, so as not to be taken. Most likely, soon they will tighten the nuts in the training centers abroad, or they will stop transporting the captured elite stormtroopers altogether… too many people want to get out of the foreign training center ) Now they are already transporting many times less to study abroad than at the beginning. And soon, probably, they will close it all together or make some kind of “pledge”, like in North Korea. These bastards earn the money that Europe allocates, our battalion took everyone, after Poland they went to Germany for exactly one week. Recently, a law was passed (in Ukraine), according to which after the first SZCH, you can return with a transfer to another part, but you will immediately be sent to slaughter, such laws do not attract (more soldiers).

Our latest material “Run guys, I’ll be back!” also tells the dizzying story of a Ukrainian who was captured while trying to cross the border, was forcibly drafted, and then escaped from the training unit together with an acquaintance captured by the border guards, was able to finally leave through the Carpathians and received protection in Europe. Migrant smugglers also admit that if earlier deserters were rare among their clients, since around May at least one military fugitive has appeared in almost every group.

Law No. 3902-IX was adopted on August 20; it entered into force on September 7. It allows servicemen to return to the unit without penalty after the first voluntary desertion or desertion. This had consequences: the collapse of the defense in the Donetsk region literally in a couple of months. The lack of motivation of the personnel and the loss of the ability to command the troops is an even more important reason for the surrender of settlements than the lack of weapons and ammunition. Due to the retreat, morale falls more and more. With the fall of Ugledar a month ago (i first public demonstration those who left part of the front and voluntarily returned to their area), plus the fall of Gornyak and Selidovy at the end of October, the Ukrainian front in Donbas is falling not in days, but in hours.

El Paísone of the largest newspapers in Spain, wrote October 21: “The Ukrainian military on the Kurakhiv front claim that the number of troops has been drastically reduced, which is a worse obstacle than the need for additional weapons.” In addition to arbitrary abandonment of units and desertion, the newspaper mentioned that the fighters of the 116th Territorial Defense Brigade from the Poltava region refused to carry out the order in Kurakhovo (also in the south of Donbas) and that the brigade was transferred to Sumy. . Journal of the British Liberal Establishment Economist notes in an article On November 7, about the same section of the front:

The concern now is not what happens on the front lines, but what it reveals about the stresses behind them. In conditions of falling trust between society, the army and the political leadership, Ukraine is trying to compensate for losses on the battlefield by conscription, barely fulfilling two-thirds of its goal. Meanwhile, Russia is making up for its losses by recruiting for lucrative contracts without needing to return to mass mobilization. A senior Ukrainian military commander admits that morale has collapsed in some of the worst areas of the front. A source in the General Staff suggests that almost a fifth of the soldiers went into exile from their posts.

If the latest estimate is not inflated, it may be even more than ours estimate 170,000 military deserters from February 2022 that we provided a month ago.

At the same time, if previously the state usually resorted to beatings in order to drive civilians into the army, on October 24 it became known that now it also uses mass violence against front-line soldiers. This was reported by relatives of the soldiers of the 210th battalion of the 120th territorial defense brigade from the Vinnytsia region. According to relatives, the fighters refused to die in the battle for Gornyak.

According to these women, on the night of October 24, the leadership of the 110th separate mechanized brigade arrived at the location of the battalion together with unknown armed persons in military uniform. The soldiers were ordered to immediately board the bus that had been brought; when they refused, physical force was used, and in some cases the “visitors” reportedly shot at them. Some of the men were stuffed into buses and taken to an unknown destination, others managed to escape. Those who were not caught by force were ordered to be transferred without permission to Barvenkovo in the Kharkiv region for a vacation to rest and recover. Not knowing where their male relatives are, the families of servicemen of the 210th battalion held a rally in Vinnytsia. They were told to wait for information. The fate of those who fled from there is also unknown.

Acts of individual terror against the war and the state became much less common as the US election approached (probably because many people were unwilling to risk a long prison term when peace talks could begin soon). However, on the morning of October 13, in Poltava, an employee of the voivodship found a stretch mark from a grenade near her gate, which was probably made by some local evader who had previously threatened to throw grenades at her. On November 5, news came from the Dnipropetrovsk region that plainclothes policemen wanted to mobilize a truck driver who had come to pick up his children. He fought them off and drove off, filming everything on his phone. They then came to his home, demanding that the footage be removed. The man met them with a rifle and a Molotov cocktail – he managed to make them leave by threatening to set the car on fire and shoot them. On September 26, two residents of the Ukrainian-Romanian border received each more than 3 years of imprisonment for hooliganism, attack with axes (traditional Hutsul weapon) on military personnel and their car on March 7. viral video that attack acquired a cult status in Ukrainian anti-war circles.

This text was prepared on the eve of the 107th anniversary of the October Revolution, which was accompanied by the self-demobilization of the Russian army, which ultimately led to Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War. Disintegration of the army accelerated so much so that it actually dispersed and ceased to exist at the beginning of 1918. A little later, the nationalist Ukrainian People’s Republic was also defeated, as its own troops did not want to defend it. Paradoxically, Trump’s coming to power, which many associate with the expectation of an end to US support for the agonizing dictatorship in Ukraine, may ultimately save this regime from military defeat.