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More than 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers have deserted or abandoned their units since the beginning of 2024, according to local judicial reports.
kyiv is struggling to recruit men as its army has been decimated and exhausted after more than two years of conflict, compounded by the daily advances of Russian troops on the Eastern Front.
Despite lowering the legal age for enlisting in the army, the government is failing to recruit as many soldiers as Russia, which is planning a new call-up in the fall to mobilize more than 100,000 men.
Local authorities are also considering reducing the sentences faced by deserters in an attempt to bring them back into line.
While desertions have taken place since the start of the conflict in February 2022, their number has exploded in the last two years, rising from 3,342 in 2022 to more than 15,000 two years later, according to data collected by the justice system.
According to journalist Volodymyr Boiko, who serves in the 101st Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the real number of deserters could be as high as 150,000, ten times the official figure.
“The deserters are not being prosecuted, which has led to the problem getting worse over the past two and a half years. Today, the situation is at an impasse. It is impossible to bring such a large number of deserters to justice,” he wrote on Facebook.
