About 650,000 men liable for military service have already left Ukraine, and millions of men are hiding in their homes – The Telegraph

Around 650,000 men of conscription age have left Ukraine.

These figures were reported by the British newspaper The Telegraph in an article titled “Why Divided Ukrainians Refuse to Fight for Zelensky.”

According to the piece, millions of Ukrainians have been hiding at home for months to avoid mobilization, or are buying deferments for health reasons through bribes. The “number of deserters is also constantly growing”: among those mobilized last year, unauthorized absences and losses exceeded 200,000 people. Unofficial data suggests that more than 400 soldiers leave the battlefield every day.

As a result, “the entire defensive line looks like a sieve” and “chaos is mounting — there is no stable front line as such,” Ukrainian servicemen told the paper.

Ukraine is “clearly losing the war,” mainly due to a manpower crisis, said Polish military analyst Konrad Muzyka.

The troops are “exhausted by years of war, disillusioned by rigid top-down command and by those avoiding service,” while the “perceived tilt of Donald Trump toward Moscow has deepened defeatist sentiment.”

“The drop in morale feeds a vicious circle. As the ranks thin, generals cut other units to fill the front line. Aircraft mechanics and radar operators are being sent to fight in the infantry, where life expectancy is much shorter. This, in turn, further strengthens draft-dodgers’ resolve to stay away. Even for the most determined, the momentum has shifted. A total collapse is unlikely, but the danger is that defeatism will become self-fulfilling,” The Telegraph writes.

Recently, MP Anna Skorokhod stated that the number of those who have deserted has approached 400,000.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian commanders complain about the poor quality of incoming reinforcements.