The State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine detained the company commander of the 155th brigade, from which hundreds of soldiers had deserted

The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) has detained the commander of a company from the controversial 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade “Anna Kyivska,” currently under investigation for widespread desertion cases.

This was reported on the bureau’s Facebook page.

According to the investigation, a senior lieutenant of the brigade went AWOL and incited his subordinates to do the same. Investigators established that at the end of last year, the commander failed to comply with an order to transfer his company to operational subordination under another unit.

He was detained today in the Rivne region, taken to Kyiv, and immediately placed in a pretrial detention center without the possibility of bail.

Meanwhile, the Commander of the Ground Forces, Mykhailo Drapatyi, commented on the mass desertions from the 155th Brigade. He reported to the president that the brigade was formed *”from scratch,”* which *”happened for the first time and within a fairly short timeframe—just a few months.”*

“No one had experience of this kind before, so it was impossible to foresee all the nuances and details of this process. A project of this scale became a challenge for the Ground Forces Command, and not all services performed perfectly. The task of the Armed Forces is to prove the effectiveness of this project, correct all mistakes, and ensure they are not repeated in the future,” said Major General Drapatyi.

It should be recalled that journalist Yuriy Butusov was the first to report the desertion of 50 Ukrainian soldiers from the “Anna Kyivska” Brigade in France. He also noted that after the brigade’s return to Ukraine, 1,700 soldiers deserted.

The SBI has stated that it is investigating the facts reported in the media about the situation in the “Anna Kyivska” Brigade. Later, the French Ministry of Armed Forces confirmed that “dozens” of Ukrainian soldiers undergoing training in France had deserted while still on French soil.