On Sept. 21, 2014, a soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ (AFU) 56th separate motorized infantry brigade of Mariupol, Serhiy Gnezdilov, wrote a post on Facebook in which he announced that he was going to the SZCH (AWOL – absent without leave), that is to desert his post. Under Ukraine’s imposition of martial law that is potentially punishable by imprisonment for 5 to 10 years.
“From now on, I will go SZCH [abandon his military post], until the establishment of clear terms of service, or until my 25th birthday, with five years of impeccable military service behind me. I'll cross it out: perfect,” Gnezdilov wrote on Facebook in a lengthy justification for his actions.
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We managed to contact him. He was a man of few words.
“I didn't expect anything from the state,” Gnezdilov said. He added that he understands that he committed a crime and is ready to be punished according to the law.
But his colleagues said much more.
In the 56th Brigade, an internal investigation was initiated. His fellow fighters were divided into two camps – some harshly condemning his social media post as promoting desertion, while others – although they also condemned him, indicating that at the human level, they understood him, because many members of the unit had been serving at the front for more than two years without rotation.
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“Can I understand those who go AWOL in the third year of the war? Do I support such decisions, especially those made publicly? No, I don't support it. Because an oath given publicly should not be an empty phrase. And I urge you not to do this because it can have very bad consequences,” a Sergeant of the 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade, Ilya Krotenko wrote on Facebook.
According to the Office of the Prosecutor General, more than 60,000 criminal cases have been initiated for unauthorized abandonment of a unit or desertion since 2022, with nearly half of the cases occurring this year.
What makes a soldier run away?
Firstly, the rotation situation is difficult. There never enough enough soldiers at the front, the brigade is rarely replenished, forcing servicemen to stay on the front line for a very long time without rest. With intense fighting continuing and exhausting front line units it’s often impossible to give the individuals any rest.
Some have been in the war zone continuously since the February 2022 full-scale invasion - with only the possibility of short, 10-day vacations twice a year. Some troops have not been home or seen their families for over a year.
“This is [only] my third vacation in two years of war. The first was 5 days in 2022, the second – in the fall of 2023 for 10 days, and now it’s also for 10 days. Once a year, I only see my family for a little more than a week, almost all year I sleep in a trench and eat offal, while I constantly catch shells on my head. It's more than fatigue. Of course, I'm not running away, but I understand those who do. If they have a rest, they will return,” Oleksii, a senior soldier from an AFU mechanized brigade places the problem in context.
“In my battalion for the whole time [of the war], there have been only 10-12 AWOL cases from more than 300 people. This is very small. It is hard, but I try to give people vacations. Many of these cases desertion were by frankly bad fighters and ‘avatars’ [alcoholics]. We don’t even try to persuade them to return, we don’t look for them – let the VSP [military police] engage,” Vadym, a Battalion Commander, from an AFU combat brigades fighting in the East.
He then adds, “When we were promised after several months of continuous fighting to get at least a month to replenish and rest, and then we weren’t given it, some members of the unit lost their nerves. About 15 people have already deserted, not avatars, but high-quality fighters who are just tired.”
The granting of vacations directly depends, he says, on the number of trained, combat-ready people in the unit. The fewer there are, the fewer vacations can be granted.
“Because I can't, even if I want to, send everyone who wants to go, because someone has to defend the trenches, and the fewer people I have the fewer I can let go even for just 10 days with their family, because someone has to fight at this time,” Vadym says.
He says that when the battalion was finally withdrawn for replenishment, it was necessary for a special commission to declare the unit no longer combat effective due to its poor morale and troop losses. However, the unit is still at war. The inability to send soldiers on vacation engenders a vicious circle: granting fewer vacations and opportunities for respite results in increasingly exhausted personnel, some of whom are tempted to desert, which in turn means there are fewer fighters and the opportunity to grant vacations becomes even harder.
“We don't have many cases of desertion yet, but people are running out of strength. Some got out suffering from ‘Chronicles’ [chronic diseases], many of our guys are over 40, we are short of people, can offer fewer vacations, and problems with unit rotations persist. The battalion that took over our positions almost a year ago has still not been withdrawn. That's why everyone is discussing Gnezdilov's post,” Volodymyr, a fighter of one of the Territorial defense brigades, says.
Another problem is a sense of injustice many serving at the front feel because of many rear echelon troops who have never been sent into combat.
“There is still a sense of deep public injustice from the fact that some of us have to defend the Motherland until we retire or are killed, while someone with ‘connections’ can get out of fighting by paying tens of thousands of hryvnias. Therefore, if I get an opportunity to resign serving in the field legally, I will take advantage of it. And a further return to the army will no longer be part of my plans under any circumstances,” Sergeant Krotenko writes.
The scale of desertions has become so significant that the Verkhovna Rada adopted Law No. 11322 on Aug. 20, which provides makes the first instance of desertion no longer a criminal offence. It allows the soldier to return to his unit without punishment, if his commander consents.
However, in an attempt to solve both issues, a new law on mobilization was adopted in the spring, by which an electronic data base of a conscription reserve was created.
Did it help?
Problems with mobilization
The law on mobilization has indeed led to some progress. Ukrainian men were given 2 months to update their credentials which resulted in more than 4 million Ukrainian men updating their data, more than 3 million of them via the “Reserve+” mobile app by Aug. 14, according to the Ministry of Defense.
However, some have reservations about the process.
"And this is good, in one way or another, we now have more than 4 million registered reservists. The new law is better than the old Soviet model we had before as it allows volunteers to look for a military unit of their choosing,” military analyst Mykhailo Samus says.
The new law led to a surge in mobilization in the summer when totals reached more than 40,000 per month.
Military expert and veteran Yevgen Dykyj said, “The exact figures are debatable, but we are really mobilizing much more people than six months ago. Recruitment is working, and the opportunity for commanders to recruit individual fighters themselves has brought positive changes. But there is one caveat – our training centers are full, and their capacity, even considering out-of-country training, does not allow us to accept and train them all at the same time. The army receives people a few at a time”.
Several agencies that were looking for people for specific units, for example, UAV operators, says that it is working well in tandem with the activities of territorial recruitment centers (TRC). The agency conducts all interviews with the candidate after which the TRC allocates a formal specialization to the individual, and maintains the necessary statistics of those mobilized with the minimum effort itself.
Representatives of the TRC told Kyiv Post that now the flow of volunteers and those who want to mobilize is subsiding because two months after the adoption of the law, many see that the fines for those failing to mobilize are rarely issued once again weakening the incentive to come forward.
The new wave of mobilization has also yet to be felt at the front. While some divisions have started receiving reinforcements it has not been at the levels expected.
“I received 40 people in the battalion this summer as a replenishment. Yes, this is a lot, this is the largest number that I received at the same time, they arrived in groups of three, five or seven people. But I immediately had to reject half of the 40 as being unsuitable for front line service. The other 20, were not fully trained and because the replenishment did not take place to the rear when the unit was withdrawn for recovery, they had to learn in the war zone. That is, we didn't have time to give these people any additional training, conduct coordination, and so on. They were immediately thrown onto the line of contact. For people without combat experience this is difficult, they die faster. I was given these people not for quality, but for quantity – so that everything looked good on paper” Vadym the Battalion Commander said.
Many potential volunteers are afraid to come forward for fear of being deployed untrained and the increased likelihood of dying as a result.
Service without end
The military likes to joke that “we will be discharged as pensioners,” but the issue of being released on long–term leave or demobilization of those who serve the longest is very relevant. Provision was made for this in the new mobilization laws but it was removed at the last moment, angering many military personnel.
“Well, you know, it was like you were promised something, promised, you were waiting for it like you were thirsty for water in the desert. And then at the last moment, they took it away from you. It's sad. We would all very much like to switch with those who are now in the rear,” Serhiy, a fighter in one of the Territorial Defense Units, tells us.
Serhiy Gnezdilov told the Kyiv Post that for him, setting service limits would be a motivation to return to his unit. But there is still another problem.
“The maximum service time and demobilization is like the wing of an airplane; it can’t take off with one wing. We need two wings. The second is mobilization. We must replace those who leave the front. Otherwise, without a strong mobilization process, to replace those who leave the front will fall apart. We need a parallel mobilization process, too,” Dykyj says.
According to the Ukrainian MP Roman Kostenko, a bill on demobilization is currently being developed which may come before parliament in the fall, but there is no news on whether there will be an increase in mobilization in parallel.
“The problem needs to be investigated comprehensively. The issue should not focus on punishment and prosecution. If it is not possible to carry out demobilization, perhaps it is necessary to solve the issue with long vacations, and transfer to the rear positions of those qualified and important military personnel who are obviously ‘burned out.’ Of course, mass mobilization could be an option – ideally, everyone who updated the data gets in line, and then rotations occur: 100,000 demobilize as 100,000 mobilize. But can this be done in the current conditions? Can we mobilize everybody, especially from within critical sectors of the economy?” Samus says.
Ukrainian authorities have yet to signal a need for mass mobilization to motivate and encourage people to serve.
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