Ukraine: From a Wave of Desertion to Spontaneous Self-Demobilization Amid US Elections

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In the lead-up to the US elections, the flight of personnel from the Ukrainian Armed Forces since the middle of 2024 took on the character of an avalanche, threatening to leave the regime without an army in the near future. According to Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General, from January 2022 to September 2024, almost 90 thousand criminal proceedings were opened because of such facts, and the majority were initiated since the beginning of the current year: 35,307 out of 59,606 cases of unauthorized leaving of a unit (Article 407 of the Criminal Code) and 18,196 out of 29,521 cases of desertion (Article 408 of the Criminal Code). The largest number of desertions was registered in the regions of Zaporozhye (6,144), Kharkov (5,771) and Donetsk (5,318), while the regions of Donetsk (8,574), Dnepropetrovsk (3,308), Zhytomyr (2,433) and Lviv (2,170) are leading in terms of cases of unauthorized leaving of units (SZCh in Ukrainian). These are only the cases to which the authorities reacted. However, even of these, only 4,698 cases of unauthorized leaving and 442 cases of desertion reached the court. 2,592 and 414 cases were closed, respectively (during the same period).

9,487 criminal proceedings were registered in Ukraine under the mentioned two articles in October 2024. For comparison, in January 2024, there were initiated only 3,448 criminal proceedings. And in total, from February 2022 to November 1, 2024, already 95,296 criminal cases were opened. (The composition of one brigade in the Armed Forces of Ukraine is from 3 to 5 thousand persons.) Although both these articles may apply not only in the AFU, much less is heard about escapes from other Ukrainian armed structures, as, in particular, our interlocutor did, who deserted from the State Border Guard Service.

Since August, information has been leaking out from time to time about people who escaped their units before being sent to the Kursk operation. For example, the following was reported about the 82nd Airborne Assault Brigade, which took part in last year's southern counteroffensive and is considered an elite and one of the best equipped units. “On August 10, I found out that my acquaintance is in SZCh. They had to go to the Kursk [region], he says that more than 40 people left everything and went home. He says: "they gave me some dispatch letter, I looked at it and realized that it’s a one-way ticket." He doesn't live in the place [where he is officially registered], got a job, I don't know exactly how he got out, he doesn't really want to talk about it. He has a normal medical form, he was a sergeant in the army, by conscription. He was taken near the house, but he wouldn’t budge, and then I learned that he’s at home. [At first] Every day 1-2 people, and then, after they found out that they were going to Kurshchyna, many fled […] It’s not so far from me, although he’s not very visible now. But judging by everything, literally only a few stand trial, it's just that their number is very large. I'm sorry but I can't provide more information. I don't think he will want to either. Such are the times,” a resident of the Khmelnytsky region told us on October 9.
Greetings to Ukrainian and Russian deserters from the streets of Turin. Sent us by our local reader
"Zelensky is an executioner" reportedly on the streets of Zaporozhye. From our reader, also a month ago

Those sent to NATO training grounds are massively deserting too. “The main thing is to have a foreign passport with you; 29 people left our battalion in Poland. Everything depends on the situation, at the first opportunity, they are there for a month, there will be many chances. Civilian clothes so that they don’t take them. Most likely, they will soon tighten the screws in training centers abroad, or will stop transporting the caught elite stormtroopers there altogether… too many want to get out of a foreign training center ) Now they are already transporting many times less for training abroad than at the beginning. And soon they will probably shut this down all together or will make some kind of bail, like in North Korea. These fag**ts earn money that Europe allocates, our battalion took everyone who wanted to go, after Poland they went to Germany for a week exactly now. Recently, a law was passed [in Ukraine] that after the first SZCh you can return with a transfer to another unit, but they will immediately send you to slaughter, such laws don’t attract”. This is what a user named Ruslan wrote on September 13 in the open Telegram chat UFM for mutual aid in crossing the border. Our recent material “Run away, guys, I’ll be back!” also tells the dizzying story of a Ukrainian who was captured as he was trying to cross the border, forcibly drafted, and then escaped from the training unit with the one he acquainted in captivity of border guards, managed to finally go out through the Carpathian Mountains and has received protection in Europe. Migrant smugglers also admit that, if deserters were rare among their clients before, since about May, at least one fugitive military man has appeared in almost every group.

The early October loss of Ugledar (Vuhledar in Ukrainian), the "steppe Monte Cassino" in the south of Donbass, was another link in the chain of declining controllability of troops after Ukrainian units north of Kharkov could not withstand the barrage of fire on May 10 and unauthorizedly retreated from the border 10 km closer to the city. The first case of collective disobedience of fighters in the Ugledar direction became known in the winter, and from the Russian side: 21 stormtrooper of the 155th Marine Brigade of the Pacific Fleet locked themselves in a room, refused to follow orders from the command and recorded a video statement about heavy losses during the assault on Novomikhaylovka, then taken in April. They were threatened with execution.

In the fall, the disintegration of the Ukrainian defense of Ugledar became one of the key reasons for the retreat from it. Volodymyr Boiko, a Kiev journalist serving in the 241st Territorial Defense Brigade of the AFU, accuses the regime of preparing a capitulation and insufficient repressiveness towards the military. In particular, on October 3, he wrote in his blog:

“What has been happening in Vuhledar over the past few days, in general, is called a local collapse of the front. The chaotic retreat of the remnants of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, which still has not received an order to withdraw, and then leaving the town within three days after months of successful defense, is something I have warned about many times since January 2024. It will only get worse. […] Here, for example, is information about the last, before the surrender of Vuhledar, replenishment of personnel of the 72nd Brigade. 50 new recruits, mostly aged 52-56, arrived in the brigade. 30 of them were immediately sent to rear units and hospitals, as they were not fit for front-line service due to their health (because the enlistment office was implementing a draft plan and mobilizing the sick). Of the remaining 20, 16 servicemen deserted on the second day. Thus, out of a replenishment of 50 people, 4 were sent to the position, and after the first rotation, these four also deserted. And such a situation there is on the entire front.”

The rally in the 123rd Brigade

On the same day, October 3, in Voznesensk of the Nikolaev/Mykolaiv region, about 100 soldiers from the 187th Battalion of the 123rd Territorial Defense Brigade came out to protest. All of them refused to carry out the combat mission and left their unit without permission instead of supporting the 72nd Brigade. According to them, they lacked the training and weapons to take part in the fighting. “I have repeatedly appealed, even to my section, for which I was responsible. I asked to provide PKMs, machine guns. "We don’t have any, we can’t provide." And then to Donbass, with what?”, a platoon commander named Sergei told state TV. It was the first public demonstration of those who left their unit at the front and returned to their region without permission.

The day before, 33-year-old Igor Grib, commander of the 186th Battalion in this brigade, shot himself because his battalion fled from its positions near Ugledar. (This led to the final loss of the town.) Volodymyr Boiko writes that the lieutenant colonel committed suicide after the formation: when the soldiers dispersed, they heard a shot. On October 4, a farewell ceremony for the officer was held in Pervomaysk. The results of the internal investigation about his death are unknown, the situation in the battalion is classified. There is a version that Grib was killed by fleeing soldiers for trying to stop them.

Law No. 3902-IX was adopted on August 20 and came into force on September 7. It allows returning to a unit after the first unauthorized leaving or desertion without any punishment, has had consequences with a collapse of defense in the Donetsk region in just a couple of months (as we assumed in Russian and in English). The lack of motivated personnel and the weakening controllability of the troops are an even more important reason for the surrender of settlements than the lack of weapons and ammunition. Due to retreats, morale is declining ever more. With the fall of Ugledar, plus then of Gornyak and Selidovo at the end of October, the Ukrainian front in Donbass is falling not by the day but by the hour. From the post of Volodymyr Boiko on October 8:

“For example, only from my military unit in August-September 2024, after amendments were made to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, half of the servicemen deserted from the number that arbitrarily left the service in the previous 2.5 years. And every week there are more and more of them. Because why serve, if you can not serve and there will be nothing for it? The situation is similar in other military units that are currently defending the Donetsk region. And the total number of deserters since the beginning of the full-scale invasion is already estimated at 170 thousand, despite the fact that during this time the commanders of military units managed to achieve (through the court, scandals, complaints to the Prosecutor General's Office, etc.) the registration of 86 thousand criminal proceedings under Art. 407, 408 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.”

El País, one of the largest newspapers in Spain, wrote about this on October 21: “The Ukrainian military on the Kurakhovo front claim that the number of troops has been sharply reduced, which is a worse obstacle than the need for more weapons.” In addition to SZCh and desertions, the newspaper mentioned that soldiers of the 116th Territorial Defense Brigade from the Poltava region refused to carry out an order in Kurakhovo (also in the south of Donbass) and that the brigade was transferred to Sumy. The British liberal establishment’s magazine The Economist notes in an article on November 7 about the same section of the front: “The worry now is less what is happening at the front lines than what it reveals about stresses behind them. Amid a breakdown of trust between society, the army and the political leadership, Ukraine is struggling to replace battlefield losses with conscription, barely hitting two-thirds of its target. Russia, meanwhile, is replacing its losses by recruitment with lucrative contracts, without needing to revert to mass mobilisation. A senior Ukrainian military commander admits that there has been a collapse in morale in some of the worst sections of the front. A source in the general staff suggests that nearly a fifth of soldiers have gone AWOL from their positions.” If the latter estimate is not inflated, this may be even more than the Boiko’s estimation in 170 thousand fugitives a month ago (given that criminal cases against them are often not opened).

At the same time, if earlier the state usually resorted to beatings to drive civilians into the army, on October 24 it became known that it is now also using mass violence against front-line soldiers. The news about this were spread by relatives of fighters from the 210th Battalion of the 120th Territorial Defense Brigade from the Vinnytsia region, who, according to them, refused to die in the fight for Gornyak.

Based on account of the women, on the night of October 24, the leadership of the 110th Mechanized Brigade arrived at the battalion's location along with unknown armed persons in military uniform. The soldiers were ordered to immediately board a bus that had been brought in; when they refused, physical force was used and, in some cases, visitors reportedly shot at them. Some men were packed into buses and taken away in an unknown direction, others managed to escape. Those who were not caught by force were ordered to be transferred to Barvenkovo in the Kharkov region without permission to take leaves of absence to rest and recover. Not knowing where their male relatives are, the families of those serving in the 210th Battalion rallied in Vinnytsia. They were told to wait for information. The fate of those who escaped from there is unknown too.
The rally of relatives. As one of the commentators added, it was not the first such incident in the 120th Brigade. "The nephew fought for two years – for resistance their company was disbanded and he was transferred to the 118th Brigade. There is the same situation – the greater the casualties, the more stars [on the shoulder straps]. Swam across [the border river] Dniester and let [their commander] Pavlyuk gather his headquarters and hold the defense if the brains are absent"

Acts of individual terror against the war and the state have become much less frequent with the US elections approaching (apparently due to the reluctance of many people to risk a long prison term when peace talks may begin soon). Nevertheless, on the morning of October 13, an enlistment center’s employee in Poltava found a grenade tripwire at her gate, which is suspected of being the work of some local draft dodger previously had threatened to throw grenades at her. On November 5, it became known from the Dnepropetrovsk region that civilian-clothed enlistment agents wanted to mobilize a truck driver who had come to pick up his children. He fought them off and drove away, filming everything on his phone. Then they came to his home and entered the territory, demanding to delete that footage. The man met them with a rifle and a Molotov cocktail – he managed to force them to leave by threatening to burn the car and shoot them. On September 26, two residents of the Ukrainian-Romanian borderland received each more than 3 years of imprisonment for hooliganism, having attacked enlistment servicemen and their vehicle with axes (traditional Hutsul weapon) on March 7. Their image from the viral video of that attack has acquired cult status in Ukrainian anti-war circles.

This text was prepared on the eve of the 107th anniversary of the October Revolution, with its self-demobilization of the Russian army, which led to Russia's withdrawal from World War I. If the conflict is not frozen along the front line, today's Ukraine is at great risk of repeating this path, when the Provisional Government in Petrograd declared the democratization of the troops and an amnesty for deserters. The collapse of the army accelerated so much that it actually dispersed and ceased to exist by the beginning of 1918. A bit later, the nationalist Ukrainian People's Republic also failed because its own troops did not want to defend it. Paradoxically, the rise to power of Trump, with whom many associate the expectation of the end for support to the agonizing dictatorship in Ukraine, might, in the end, save this regime from military defeat.

Compared to the previous overview in September, the role of collective and organized desertion has clearly increased. Nonetheless, one should not delude oneself into thinking that this is already a revolutionary situation. Both Ukrainian and Russian public opinion is currently focused on the presidential elections in the United States, with many having the misguided hope that a Trump victory could provide the basis for a quick, peaceful settlement of the war. It seems that only the failure of these expectations can open the way for mass interest in a revolutionary alternative.

We are at a turning point in history.