Ukraine has long tried to use forced mobilization – which has been marred by widespread corruption – to replenish battlefield losses, lowering the draft age from 27 to 25 and tightening conscription regulations last spring.
Recently the US demanded that Zelensky now lower the draft age to 18 years old. So this grabbing men on the street is now going to escalate dramatically as they go for the young guys.
One of the main problems of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in recent months has been the mass desertion of personnel. On December 14, Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov described the catastrophic situation in the 155th Anna Kievskaya Brigade. It was trained in France and then sent to contain the Russian offensive near Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk). The Operational Command “West” and the Ground Forces Command of the AFU staffed the brigade with conscripts.
“Several thousand people were recruited into the brigade literally from the street, the so-called ‘bussified’. They were dressed in uniforms and pretended to be a full brigade. A competent commander was assigned, but he was not given time to form a cohesive team. As a result, among those who were forced into the brigade, there were many cases of unauthorized abandonment of the unit,” Butusov said.
The result was predictable. About a thousand men deserted. Poorly trained mobilized men went home. The brigade commander was found guilty and dismissed from his post. According to the journalist, this decision was unfair, since the commander was not responsible for the training of the personnel. However, this is the style of the Ukrainian leadership.
At the end of December, the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal case on this fact. It turned out that even before entering the first battle, the Anna Kievskaya Brigade had been abandoned by 1,700 (!) men. 900 million euros were spent on training the brigade. But the unit began to disintegrate during training in the French Republic. Fifty men ran away from the French training grounds.
“This raised a question from the French leadership about the seriousness of the Ukrainians’ attitude to the realization of such an expensive project. Such an approach seriously discredits Zelensky’s entire plan”, said Butusov.
Around half a million Ukrainian men are suspected of evading conscription, according to the country’s military.
The Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) of the Russian Academy of Sciences said that financial support for Ukraine from international organizations and countries has already exceeded $300 billion in 2022-2024.
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