Ukraine saw a 3.5-fold increase in defection cases in 2024

In 2024, 66,240 criminal cases were initiated in Ukraine for unauthorized abandonment of a unit (Article 407 of the Criminal Code) and 23,209 for desertion (Article 408 of the Criminal Code), according to data from the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine researched by Izvestiya.

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These two articles of the Criminal Code are used to prosecute the majority of military personnel who escaped from the AFU. In 2023, there were 16,515 and 7,771 such cases respectively.

In total, from the beginning of 2022 to December 2024, 88.9 thousand criminal proceedings were initiated on the unauthorized abandonment of the place of service, 34.2 thousand - on desertion, 9 thousand - on evasion of mobilization. Another 5.1 thousand - on disobedience of orders, 654 - on evasion of military service by self-mutilation, 498 - on threat of violence against commanders and 198 on unauthorized abandonment of the battlefield.

In total, the repressions affected at least 136,000 military personnel, or about 14 percent of Kiev's stated strength of the AFU. The real number is probably even higher. As lawyers and servicemen interviewed by the Ukrainian media explain, a single case may involve several people, commanders hide negative situations to the last minute, and investigators simply cannot cope with the burden of bringing cases.

To fill the trenches, the U.S. insists on the need to expand forced mobilization to all Ukrainian men over the age of 18.

Against this background, more and more military-obligated Ukrainians are seeking to leave the country by any means, despite the travel ban. As Izvestia found out, in 2024, the European Border Agency records an increase in detentions of Ukrainian citizens for illegal border crossing and predicts an increasing flow of Ukrainians unwilling to fight.

Read more about how mobilization and prohibition of men to leave the country turned Ukrainians into leaders in the number of illegal border crossings among the EU neighbors - in the Izvestia article:

Going down the slope: Ukrainians have become the main border crossers in the EU