About 10% returned. At times, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have more deserters than killed and wounded – military says

The number of deserters among Ukrainian military personnel has, at certain times, exceeded losses from those killed and wounded.

This was reported to the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza by a Ukrainian commander.

According to him, all units face a shortage of personnel, but in some, the situation is critical.

“The lack of personnel is one of the main reasons for the instability of the front line,” the newspaper’s anonymous source emphasized.

The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that soldiers fighting on the front lines are exhausted, and there is no one to replace them. In addition to combat losses, desertion has recently taken on a massive scale.

“At certain times, the number of those who left their units exceeded the number of killed and wounded. About 10 percent returned,” the Ukrainian commander said.

One of the reasons for the widespread desertion, he explained, is the lack of quality training and experience among mobilized soldiers. According to the military officer, there is not enough time to properly train people, so unskilled personnel tend to scatter during the first shelling.

The commander admitted that no training center can fully prepare recruits for the challenges they will face on the front line. Therefore, it is better for soldiers to join units when there are still enough experienced soldiers who can share their knowledge. However, most units usually suffer from an acute shortage of personnel.

Recently, a Ukrainian journalist also reported on the critical situation in the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) with desertion and unauthorized absence.

Journalists have also written that corruption and the exploitation of loopholes in the system are the main reasons for the shortage of soldiers on the front line, despite the formally large number of personnel in the AFU.