Ukrainian Army pows and deserters
Cassie B. – News Target Oct 31, 2025
- Ukraine faces a massive desertion crisis with hundreds of thousands of cases.
- Soldiers are leaving their posts at a rate of nearly 600 per day.
- Exhaustion and a lack of rotation are primary causes for the mass exodus.
- The military is so desperate that it is sending support staff to the front lines.
- This internal morale collapse poses a severe threat to Ukraine’s defense.
The Ukrainian military is being starved of personnel not just by battlefield losses, but by a massive and growing wave of desertions as soldiers vote with their feet to escape a conflict they see as hopeless.
Since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, prosecutors have opened more than 253,000 criminal cases for unauthorized abandonment of units and desertion, according to official data from the Prosecutor General’s Office.. This crisis of morale is severely undermining military capabilities and highlights a population that is increasingly unwilling to fight, with the problem accelerating so dramatically that by mid-2025, nearly 576 soldiers were leaving their posts every single day.
The scale of the problem is immense. Official data from the Prosecutor General’s Office shows 202,997 criminal cases were initiated for unauthorized abandonment, often called AWOL, from 2022 through July 2025. During that same period, an additional 50,058 cases were opened for the more serious charge of desertion. The trend is sharply upward, with annual abandonment cases exploding from 7,000 in 2022 to 105,500 in just the first seven months of 2025.
This year alone, the number of criminal cases involving deserters has increased almost fivefold and may reach as many as 300,000, according to MP Oleksiy Honcharenko. The monthly numbers are consistently dire, with between 14,000 and 18,000 cases of unauthorized abandonment recorded regularly. This mass exodus is creating a critical shortage of trained personnel on the front lines, directly disrupting battle strategies and defense capabilities.
A crisis of morale and manpower
The reasons soldiers are abandoning their posts are not rooted in a lack of courage but in a breakdown of conditions and hope. Reports from within the military structure point to the incompetence of some officers and a crippling lack of rotation and leave, which prevents exhausted soldiers from resting or contacting their families. One deserter named Viktor, who had volunteered early in the war, explained his disillusionment, stating, “I realized I’m nobody. Just a number.”
Another soldier, Oleksii, who went into hiding after serving on the front lines, summarized a feeling many may share, saying, “The longer the war goes on, the more people like me there will be.” For these individuals, the choice becomes one of survival, with many believing that even a potential prison sentence is a preferable option to the near-certain death and endless hardship of combat.
Ukraine’s first military ombudsperson, Olha Reshetylova, confirmed the gravity of the situation. “Let’s be honest. The problem is big,” she said. “It’s natural in a situation where you’ve had three years of major war. People are exhausted.” She added that the state cannot solve the problem with criminal punishment alone, acknowledging, “If it comes to a choice between being killed and going to prison, of course at that moment you will go with the second option.”
Desperate measures and a widening gap
In response to the crisis, Ukrainian authorities are considering ever more draconian measures. Parliament is debating reinstating full criminal liability for those who leave the army. There have been discussions about freezing the bank accounts of draft dodgers, lowering the conscription age, and eliminating exemptions. These actions signal a government growing increasingly desperate to force manpower into its depleted ranks.
The situation is different on the other side of the conflict. While the Russian army also faces desertions, with more than 25,000 soldiers and officers reported to have abandoned units in just one military district over nine months, the scale is vastly smaller. Reports indicate that Russia has prosecuted approximately 20,538 cases of AWOL and desertion since the war began, a mere fraction of the Ukrainian total.
This disparity persists even though Ukraine is defending its homeland. Analysts suggest the reason is not morale but simple mathematics. Russia’s larger population allows it to regularly rotate soldiers off the front lines, preventing the kind of exhaustion that plagues Ukrainian troops. One report noted that Russian soldiers typically serve three to six months before relief, while Ukrainian soldiers often serve indefinitely.
The Ukrainian military’s desperation is palpable. Lieutenant General Oleksandr Syrsky has admitted to critical manpower shortages, forcing the military to take measures such as sending maintenance and logistics staff to the front lines to fill the gaps in the infantry. This cannibalization of support roles underscores the severity of the personnel crisis.
Ultimately, the soaring desertion rate is a powerful indicator of war fatigue and a collapsing will to fight. It paints a picture of a military structure that is buckling under the weight of a prolonged attritional war, where soldiers feel abandoned by their command and see no end in sight. As one soldier put it, “Everybody is tired. The mood has changed.” This internal collapse of morale may prove to be a more significant threat to Ukraine’s defense than any external enemy.
Sources for this article include:
“The Ukrainian military is being starved … but by a massive and growing wave of desertions … ”
About time !!! Maybe you CAN fix stupid !
many have surrendered to russia where putin offers them a chance to live there a lot of english folk are going there putin offers them a small house and a plot of land
i may go myself/
Its all part of liquidating the white man as both ‘sides’ (Russia/Ukraine) are governed by the same clique of Zionist-Commie Jews behind their commie frontmen (putin/zelensky) .they’re all in on it
Kneel Before Zod
Way Less than half of Britons feel pride in country
Story by Telegraph reporters
Less than half of Britons feel proud of their country, a poll has found.
Researchers from King’s College London (KCL) said much fewer than half of respondents in their study said they feel proud of Britain,
falling from 56 per cent to 26 per cent in the past five years.
Nine out of ten Britons feel there is division in the country and half of those polled said they believe British culture developed over hundreds
of years is being changed, way too quickly, the researchers said.
It follows a huge surge in government people trafficking into the country
The survey suggests that tension between migrants and British-born people have risen to a new high.
The migrant costs have now risen to £40 billion
it also suggested the proportion of the public feeling transgender and pervert rights have gone “too far” has more than doubled in five years.
and that government does not listen, many people now see the government as the enemy
Deliveroo’ migranr gunman guilty of shooting girl during spree of attacks
Story by Emily Pennink • 9h •
A black migrant gunman has been found guilty of shooting an eight-year-old girl and her father while disguised as a Deliveroo rider.
Jazz Reid fired a volley of 11 shots, hitting the child twice and the 34-year-old man five times as they sat with other family members in a car in Ladbroke Grove, north-west London, on November 24.
It was one of three linked random shootings involving the use of two guns, one of which was recovered from underneath a concrete slab outside 33-year-old Reid’s home following his arrest, jurors were told.
Prosecutor Michael Goodwin KC had told jurors that each shooting was planned and executed with “precision”, with Reid even switching his mobile phone and sim card to avoid detection.
Homosexual drug dealer Reid denied being the gunman and claimed he was “set up” over a £10,000 debt and the gun found at his home was “planted”.
On Thursday, a jury at the Old Bailey found him guilty of the attempted murder of the father and wounding the girl with intent. Neither victim can be identified for legal reasons.
He was also convicted of wounding a second man with intent on October 9 last year and a string of firearms offences relating to the incidents.
The court had heard how Reid would drive a hire car to the area, change into his Deliveroo disguise – complete with a takeaway box – and cycle an e-bike to the location to find his intended targets.
WHY ARE THESESPEOPLE IN OUR COUNTRY ?
4 min read
Every sane Ukrainian should be looking for a way to kill Zelensky. The war was lost before it started, the west is using Ukraine like toilet paper. Only a fool goes to war when death is a certainty. The bottom line is the Ukraine government has caused the biggest disaster since WW2 over nothing.
over 2 million dead Uke combatants and civilians
4 million or more wounded
over half the nation left
collapsed economy
massively destroyed infrastructure
Zelensky now a billionaire with at least 5 mansions
Anyone who protects scumbag Zelensky should be immediately killed also
Same for anyone protecting Trump or Netanyahu
These jew and their shabbos goy Judas goats have names and addresses. Anyone trained in explosives can now use their skills to take out their leaders. Find their route, dig a hole in the road, then detonate a huge charge when the motorcade goes by, maybe drop a tree in the road so they stop directly over the charge.
Ukraine has tens of thousands of trained sharpshooters. Find out where this creep Zelensky is hanging out, when you get this jew perv in the crosshairs, squeeze off a round and watch his cock sucking jew head explode.