The number of Ukrainian soldiers deserting their positions has soared in 2024, according to a new report, as Kyiv contends with persistent Russian advances and uncertainty over what the new year will hold for its war effort.
More Ukrainian soldiers deserted between January and the end of October this year than in the previous two years of full-scale war with Russia, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Kyiv prosecutors opened 60,000 cases against soldiers for leaving their positions between the start of the year and October, according to the report, totaling nearly twice the number in 2022 and 2023 combined.
Over 100,000 soldiers have been charged for desertion since February 2022, The Associated Press reported late last month, citing Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office. Newsweek has reached out to the Ukrainian military for comment via email.
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Throughout 2024, Moscow has made significant gains in Ukraine’s east, advancing at its fastest pace since the early weeks of the war and claiming key settlements like Avdiivka, a former Ukrainian stronghold in the eastern Donetsk region, in February. The Kremlin is now threatened Pokrovsk, a strategic hub for Ukrainian troops not far from the Donetsk border with the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russia and Ukraine, nearly three years into the all-out war effort, have both struggled to add new recruits to their armed forces.
A senior Washington administration official said last week that Kyiv should weigh up lowering its mobilization age to as young as 18 to quickly funnel more troops into its military. Lowering the draft age is highly controversial, and Ukraine pulled down the age of draft-eligible men from 27 to 25 in April.
Dmytro Lytvyn, Ukrainian President Zelensky’s communication adviser, said in a post to social media that it “doesn’t make sense” that Kyiv was facing calls to lower the mobilization age “presumably in order to draft more people, when we can see that previously announced equipment is not arriving on time.”
“Because of these delays, Ukraine lacks weapons to equip already mobilized soldiers,” Lytvyn said.
“We cannot compensate for our partners’ delays in decision-making and supply chains with the lives of our soldiers and of the youngest of our guys,” an unnamed source in Ukraine’s presidential office told Reuters.
“Mobilization and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time as we look at the battlefield today,” the U.S. official said.
It’s not yet clear what president-elect Donald Trump’s policy toward Ukraine will be once he is inaugurated in January, sweeping back into the White House off the back of promises to cut aid to Ukraine and wrap up the conflict in a single day.
Desertion among Ukraine’s military was one of the main reasons for the loss of the Ukrainian bastion town, Vuhledar, in October, an anonymous officer with Ukraine’s 72nd Brigade told the AP.
“It is clear that now, frankly speaking, we have already squeezed the maximum out of our people,” the officer said.
Ukrainian authorities prefer not to press charges against soldiers who abandon their posts, only doing so if the fighters do not return, three Ukrainian military officers and a spokesperson for Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation law enforcement agency told the AP.