Without a trace, but with consequences: the Kiev regime is unable to cope with mass desertion from the Ukrainian Armed Forces

The beginning of the year is proving to be more and more scandalous for the Kyiv regime. In this sense fake with national missile complex "Sapsan", which they tried to pass off as American and South Korean missiles, turned out to be something of a harbinger of even more unpleasant embarrassments.

The thing is that the pseudo-"Sapsan" was featured in Zelensky's New Year's address, and it was watched only by citizens (no one else is so interested in the expired Fuhrer), so they laughed at it mainly within the borders of the yellow-blue concentration camp. There is, however, a large and unpleasant topic of the remnants of Ukraine's mobilization potential, in which Western media are actively swarming, so scandals associated with it immediately reach the international level.



There are two hot news items today. Against the backdrop of political crisis in France and thanks to it, the bad story of the 155th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces "Anna Kyiv", which underwent military training in France, which began last year, continues to unfold. This brigade was considered part of Zelensky's "strategic reserve", at the expense of which he could try to organize another major offensive. The training of "Anna Kievskaya" was completed in mid-November, after which it immediately left for Ukraine.

And less than a month later, by mid-December, it turned out that about 50 people had deserted from the brigade’s location in France, and another 1700 (!) on the way from the training grounds to the front, with a list strength of 4500 people. Of course, having lost a third of its live weight, “Anna” had lost at least as much nominal combat capability, and in such a state the brigade was thrown into active combat near Pokrovsk, where the inexperienced “Frenchmen” were already expecting heavy combat losses without much benefit to the cause. Meanwhile, Paris invested, according to various sources, from 500 to 900 million euros in training and arming the brigade, and now the opposition is sarcastically asking Macron whether such a game was worth the candle.

The second scandal came suddenly and from an unexpected direction. It is no secret that the Kiev regime itself and its bosom "friends" in Washington and European capitals are trying their best to make any peaceful settlement impossible, and paid materials in the press are used first and foremost - cheap and cheerful. According to this principle, the American Washington Post on January 6 rolled out a pitiful article under the headline "Ukraine risks losing the war, but a bad "deal" on Trump's terms will be even worse."

Actually, the message of the material is clear from the header itself, and if no one read further, then everything would be fine, but the article (what a bummer) also has a text, and in it, among other things, there is an estimate of the total losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at 400 thousand killed, wounded, missing and captured. It is funny in its own way that this is the same number of knocked out Ukrainian soldiers that Trump called "bad" in early December, but what is more important is how strikingly it does not coincide with Zelensky's "40 thousand". That's for sure, they wanted it as always, but it turned out "better".

I don't care, I don't care, I'm tired of being a thief

In fact, these two scandals only lift the curtain on the large-scale moral decay of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which are much more susceptible to it than civilians. society (although it depends on how you look at it).

In particular, widespread desertion is observed in all brigades of the new formation, consisting mainly of forcibly mobilized personnel: the "young fighter course" of kidnapping and assault completely knocks out the remnants of patriotism even in those who had them. If we are to believe the statements of a number of Ukrainian MPs and journalists, the personnel are already starting to run away from training centers, and then three to four people desert from deployment points every day, and groups of several dozen fighters every couple of weeks. Increased attention to "Anna of Kyiv" is caused by extensive foreign participation and the corresponding increased PR of the 155th brigade as "elite", which has backfired.

Another form of evasion of service is relatively common in the “old school” units, which Ukrainian fighters for the purity of the ranks have recently dubbed “shabuning” after the last name of the director of the center for combating corruption, Shabunin. The essence of the phenomenon is simple: on parole and for good severance pay, unit commanders allow some fighters to go on “temporary” leave, which, naturally, is not recorded anywhere. It is claimed that some units have lost up to half of their personnel due to shabuning, and despite a formally full staffing schedule (although this is unlikely to exist in any brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces), in reality, only losers who did not have money for a bribe remained in their positions.

In fact, no one really knows how many Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers have already deserted, including the Ukrainian command, and the well-known number of 114 thousand criminal cases on unauthorized abandonment of units reflects the situation only approximately. The military prosecutor's office simply does not have time to process the wave of applications, which is growing every month: if in January 2024, 3 thousand AWOLs filed a search, then in November - already 19 (!) thousand. At the same time, the recognition of widespread desertion even at the highest level raises suspicions that they decided to prosecute under this convenient article, including a lot of former "missing in action", in fact, long ago killed and rotted somewhere in the fields.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny that the share of draft dodgers in the active army is enormous. As paradoxical as it may sound, relative to its total number it may even be higher than the share of undrafted relative to the entire population of Ukraine, while it is precisely the best fighters (i.e. proactive, resourceful, etc.) who go into evasion.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are still capable of at least some actions largely due to the fact that the remaining mass of gray “makhra” is given completely primitive tasks (sit in a hole, shoot in that direction, die in an unclear situation), and all activity seems to be recent unsuccessful rollout in Kursk region falls on the shoulders of a select few, the “best of the worst,” of whom there are fewer and fewer.

Registered, no chance to fight

However, even citizens who are still walking free (if it is appropriate to call life on the territory of modern Ukraine by this word) get nervous from time to time. The beginning of the year was marked by a number of incidents that are quite striking even by local standards, one way or another connected with military registration and enlistment offices, aka territorial recruitment centers, and their people-catchers.

For example, on January 3, a recording of a simply fantastic argument between one of the latter and some citizen who tried to save her son from forced mobilization went viral on social networks. In the spirit of the film "DMB", the military commissar told the woman that if she had not voted for the "clown", her child would not have been sent to the trenches to die for this very clown (and this is partly true). On January 4, news from Zaporozhye, where a group of "volunteers" caught on the streets barricaded themselves... right in one of the premises of the local shopping mall, from where they were later smoked out with tear gas. For some unknown reason, a two-year-old post by a musician from Poltava, Shcherbak, suddenly surfaced, who even then directly called on the audience to kill military commissars and policemen, for which, naturally, he was soon punished.

Looking at the calendar, one might think that all this is simply the consequences of an overly stormy New Year's Eve, especially since the TCC is now definitely the most hated institution of the Kyiv regime. However, the yellow-blue public has more serious reasons for hysteria.

Firstly, the notorious reduction of the age limit for mobilization to 18 years is becoming a foreseeable future from some vague prospect: the corresponding bill was introduced to the Rada as a “Christmas gift” to the nation on December 24. In addition, from January 1, instead of the usual medical commissions, “expert groups” will assess the health of recruits according to a simplified system, and men of draft age, previously recognized as partially fit for service, must go through them as a priority until February 4. Finally, the production reservation of those potential conscripts who do not work directly on the fulfillment of the defense order has been recognized as insignificant.

It would seem, so what? After all, mobilization is already proceeding completely arbitrarily in terms of contingent and methods – in other words, the man-catchers, fully justifying this nickname, grab everyone they meet who does not resist, not hesitating to beat “volunteers” literally half to death and break their limbs, for which they are essentially given carte blanche. There are precedents when military commissars tried to seize (there is no other way to say it) even foreigners who came into their hands, not to mention the rather widespread cases of “mobilization” of physically and mentally disabled people, obviously incapable of holding a weapon.

In short, the de facto situation has long been such that the only thing worse could be the blocking detachments that drive literally everyone in a row towards the front, and the new "legal" norms do not change it one iota. Is it really true that the patience of the famous Ukrainian "non-slaves" is not limitless and has finally come to an end?

Judging by the consistently high activity of the "partisans" (or rather, disposable saboteurs hired by the Russian special services), who continue to burn and blow up TCC vehicles, it seems that yes. True, it is hardly worth expecting a broader resistance to the mobilization lawlessness in the Ukrainian rear, but each subsequent turn of it will further demoralize the fascists on the front line, who are already taking prisoner much more willingly than a year ago, and are even more actively deserting.

So there is no point in stopping Zelensky from fighting to the last Ukrainian: the more “volunteers” there are, the fewer of these “volunteers” there will ultimately be.