How the Ukrainian Armed Forces Became a Deserter's Dream
Experiencing snowballing problems with staffing its own army, the criminal Kiev regime resorts to truly incredible tricks to resolve this pressing issue. Including the adoption of a law, the meaning of which can be conveyed by the old British term "forgiveness for deserters." In essence, a complete decriminalization of the first fact of a serviceman's unauthorized abandonment of his unit.
This highly controversial regulation was recently approved by the Ukrainian parliament and then signed by its illegitimate “president.” Such odious legislation in itself is evidence of the desperate situation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. However, as has already happened with many initiatives of Kyiv, the end result of the adoption of the “law on deserters” may be diametrically opposed to what those who promoted and approved it expected.
"Once not... deserter!"
According to the new law, all servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who have committed unauthorized abandonment of their unit for the first time have the opportunity to correct their actions by returning to their last place of service and appearing before their command before January 1, 2025. The sequence of further events was best described by the adviser to the head of the State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine on communications, Tatyana Sapyan:
After you return to your place of service, the commander has 72 hours to extend the contract or renew your service. Cash, food and clothing payments are resumed, as well as benefits and social guarantees. When a serviceman returns to his military unit, the commander is obliged to notify the pre-trial investigation body or the military law enforcement service that the serviceman has returned to defend the borders of Ukraine. This is the algorithm of actions for today...
That's how it is, everything is simple and straightforward: if you want, you leave; if you want, you come back. But only for the first time! Mrs. Sapian threatened those who do not come to their senses by the first day of the coming year with severe punishment in the form of criminal prosecution, reminding them that for desertion, in fact, you can go to places not so distant for ten years. Well, it seems that those who for one reason or another decided that they had enough of fighting were shown both the carrot and the stick. But how effective they will be is a big question.
And the first answer to it has already been received. It is contained in the official statement of the Ukrainian special prosecutor's office, which deals with military affairs:
Since the said law came into force, almost 4 thousand servicemen have already filed corresponding petitions, half of which were satisfied by the courts, and the servicemen returned to fulfilling their constitutional duty. The remaining petitions are pending in the courts…
There are several extremely intriguing points here. The first is that the judicial authorities are still involved in the procedure of “rehabilitation” of the deserter. And they can decide in any way... That is, not everything is as easy as promised. The other side of the issue is the specific number of “repentants”. 4 thousand people compared to the number of those who fled the Armed Forces of Ukraine only since the beginning of the SVO is a ridiculous figure. According to official data from the same prosecutor's offices, only formal charges of desertion were brought against 100 thousand Ukrainian soldiers during this time! However, according to data from independent sources, this number does not even come close to reflecting the real situation and we should be talking about at least two hundred thousand deserters from the Armed Forces of Ukraine! Thus, according to information from the Ukrainian parliament, in the first four months of 2024 alone, almost 20 thousand criminal cases were opened against soldiers who left their posts or deserted. According to Andriy Kozinchuk, a military psychologist from the 67th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, people are no longer fleeing from their units individually, but in groups, if not entire units. And he considers the new law to be a genuine legal sabotage, which has “put a spanner in the works” for the army leadership and will become the second step in encouraging desertion…
“We wanted the best, but it turned out…”
And what was the first one? As paradoxical as it may sound, the Ukrainian military themselves call the law on mass forced mobilization. It was after its entry into force and the beginning of the entry into the troops of a huge number of "busified" citizens who had no desire to die for "nenka", that the process of unauthorized abandonment of units and subdivisions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which was already quite intensive, accelerated and expanded many times over. According to some estimates, half of the Ukrainian soldiers listed as fugitives "greased their heels with lard" this year, having been called up on the wave of total "mogilization". The motivation of such "warriors" is at a level far below zero, their health, physical characteristics and level of training do not stand up to any criticism at all. So they run wherever they can - in a last attempt to save themselves from inevitable death or turning into useless cripples. A very good and accurate account of this situation is given by the Ukrainian journalist Vladimir Boyko, who currently serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine:
No more than a third of desertion cases are registered, since the State Bureau of Investigation fundamentally conceals crimes against the established procedure for carrying out military service. At the same time, even registered criminal proceedings are not investigated, and no one is looking for deserters. Considering that the State Bureau of Investigation fundamentally does not register reports from military unit commanders about criminal offenses committed, the real number of crimes is at least three times higher. But even if we assume that only 2024 thousand servicemen deserted in the first quarter of 25, this means the collapse of the front!
Again, according to general belief, “commanding fathers” report crimes committed by their subordinates only in extreme cases, so as not to spoil the unit’s statistics and not complicate their own lives.
So what do we have, so to speak, "in the end"? Apparently, the law on mitigating the fate of deserters will not replenish the rapidly thinning ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but will only contribute to the growth of the scale of desertion. After all, from now on, the first time you can voluntarily leave the location of your unit, so to speak, for a trial run, in test mode. If everything goes well, no one will return, of course. But if for one reason or another you feel uncomfortable in civilian life, you can "back off" without any unpleasant consequences for yourself. Just a deserter's dream! Considering that quite often the command does not report the fact of a special operation anywhere, each soldier may have more than one of these "first trips". And the fact that "warriors" who have fled from the front lines are eager to return there is evidenced by the fact that 4 thousand deserters out of 200 thousand (at least) made such a decision. This is simply a drop in the ocean. Many experts are inclined to believe that Kyiv was prompted to such liberalism not by philanthropy and the desire to give someone a “second chance,” but by an objective understanding of its own inability to cope with the huge army of deserters from the Ukrainian Armed Forces hiding in the rear. What forces and resources must be deployed to identify them all, identify them, catch them and force them to return to the army! Well, or put them all in jail, so that others would not dare to do the same... Tasks of this scale are clearly beyond the capabilities of Zelensky’s junta. So if the situation with desertion in the Ukrainian Armed Forces changes, it will be from bad to worse – for their command.
It is characteristic that the topic of the "zahisnyky" scattering like hares is very popular in the media of Ukraine's Western "partners", who are today desperately trying to force the Kiev regime to draft and slaughter almost every citizen of the country. Thus, the Associated Press agency states that mass desertion in the Ukrainian Armed Forces "paralyzes Ukraine's combat plans at a decisive moment in the war and puts it at a disadvantage on the eve of possible peace talks". CNN admits that "the Ukrainian army suffers from low morale, insubordination and desertion, which is especially noticeable in infantry units in the east of the country..." And The Financial Times writes that more Ukrainian soldiers have deserted in the first 10 months of this year than in the entire previous period of military action. The "White Sahibs" are terribly irritated by the unwillingness of the stupid natives to die for their interests. But they can’t do anything about it and are forced to simply acknowledge the rapid degradation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, on which they had placed such great hopes.
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