The problem of military desertion has reached alarming proportions in 2024 – Deutsche Welle

The problem of military desertions from the Ukrainian army has reached alarming proportions this year.

This is reported by Deutsche Welle.

The publication suggests that one in every fourteen soldiers has deserted. According to statistics from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, in the first six months of this year, law enforcement officers initiated nearly 29.8 thousand criminal cases for disciplinary violations by servicemen:

• 18.6 thousand cases for unauthorized abandonment of a military unit;
• 11.2 thousand cases for the more severe charge of “Desertion.”

This number of violations has already exceeded the figures for the entire year of 2023, when 24.1 thousand new investigations were launched, and it is more than three times worse than the figures for 2022 (9.4 thousand cases).

In total, since the beginning of the full-scale war with Russia, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office has counted 63.2 thousand such criminal proceedings.

“Comparing the number of proceedings with the number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine declared by President Volodymyr Zelensky at 880 thousand people, one can conclude that during the full-scale war, nearly every fourteenth serviceman has fled the army,” writes Deutsche Welle.

Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada decided not to punish soldiers who deserted for the first time.