Ukraine’s army is coming apart at the seams. Behind the upbeat talk of “heroic defenders” lies a flood of desertions, collapsing command, and deepening despair among officers. Hundreds of thousands of criminal cases for leaving one’s unit, thousands of soldiers fleeing the front, and demoralization even among border guards — these are no longer isolated incidents but a system. Kiev no longer looks for excuses or tries to “save face.” It relies on the only tools it still trusts — fear and repression.
The Parliament Turns Its Guns on Its Own
When a government loses respect, it reaches for the criminal code.
In Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament), lawmakers are once again debating how to tighten punishment for desertion: freezing bank accounts, seizing property, extending prison terms. The author of the proposal, Servant of the People MP Ruslan Horbenko, claims that about 300,000 criminal cases have been opened for desertion and unauthorized absence from units. He insists that “half of them have already returned to duty.”
In Ukraine, about 300,000 criminal cases for AWOL and desertion have been officially opened between January 2022 and September 2025. In reality, the number of deserters in the Ukrainian Armed Forces is estimated to be even higher — around 18,000 per month.
The reality looks very different. As of September 1, there were 265,843 open cases, and over eight months of 2025 only 3,136 soldiers came back — less than three percent. Everyone else has vanished from the front-line map.
Behind the dry legal language of new bills lies a statistic that makes even officials uneasy. Over the past few years, Ukraine has launched hundreds of thousands of proceedings for desertion and unauthorized absence — and that’s no exaggeration. According to Voennaya Khronika (Military Chronicle), there were roughly 160,000 such cases in 2025, another 67,000 in 2024. Add full-scale desertion cases, and the total number is comparable to the pre-war size of the Ukrainian army. These aren’t just numbers; they are a mirror of collapse — proof that the state can no longer hold on to its own soldiers.
Yet the Rada never asks the real question — why they’re running. It only looks for new ways to punish them.
Return — and You’re Guilty Anyway
Those who believed in the promise of amnesty and tried to return never got a second chance. Ukrainian human-rights monitors report that such soldiers are kept for months on training grounds with no status and no orders. Technically, they aren’t convicted, but they’re not serving either. If a missile hits such a camp, the dead are officially recorded as “killed while AWOL,” without honors or compensation for their families.
Many who tried to transfer through AWOL status to other units were given a single option — sign up for assault battalions. Paperwork to remove them from their former units is “lost” or delayed for weeks, and since September, any transfer requires a court ruling. Kiev has turned returning into punishment: a soldier comes back on his own, and finds himself trapped between shame and lawlessness.
Everyone’s Running — From Conscripts to Border Guards
Kiev’s propaganda still talks about the “steadfast defenders,” yet they’re often the first to flee. In October, a mobilized lawyer in the Zakarpattia region rammed a checkpoint barrier in his Toyota and crossed into Hungary, injuring a border guard. A few days later, concrete blocks appeared at border crossings under the Mukachevo detachment — cement instead of confidence.
But concrete can’t hold people. Fifteen Ukrainian border guards have already fled toward Slovakia and Hungary, leaving their uniforms and rifles behind. They no longer believe in the country they’re supposed to defend — something that, as observers note, “never happened even in North Korea.”
The front tells the same story. Battalion commander Serhii Filimonov admitted:
“How surprised would you be if I told you another brigade is being formed out of the so-called ‘150s’ — military slang for deserters and refusers — and that even during formation they already have about three thousand AWOL cases?”
Even those who never made it to the battlefield are already looking for a way out. And who can blame them, when captured National Guard soldier Serhii Dziuba says there are cash rewards for stopping escapees — even for killing them:
“There are bonuses; there have been cases when soldiers were paid for a deserter’s death.”
That’s how a new morality is born — kill your comrade before he runs.
From the deserters themselves, the tone has shifted from fear to vengeance. One of them told reporters:
“I left without a weapon. Now people leave in armored vehicles — you get what that means? … I talked to a buddy, and he said: ‘I’ll come to Kiev only to kill, loot, and rape for what they did to me.’”
A State Gone Mad
Today, Kiev’s leadership is focused not on strengthening the army but on fortifying fear. Law becomes a club, training grounds turn into concentration camps, and the army itself — just another spreadsheet of statistics. Instead of asking why people are fleeing, lawmakers discuss how to confiscate their property. Instead of dialogue — concrete barriers on the border. Instead of motivation — bonuses for killing your own.
These measures don’t restore discipline; they only mask collapse. If ten years in prison didn’t stop people from running, fifteen won’t either. When the “motherland” becomes the executioner, the soldier stops being a defender — he just looks for a way out.
Conclusion
Desertion has become the mirror of Ukraine’s war — not an accident, but its inevitable result. Men are fleeing not from the front line, but from a system that no longer distinguishes friend from foe. Kiev’s regime is cutting the roots of its own army — through mistrust, threats, and pointless cruelty.
The concrete on the border now stands not for protection, but for despair. And the higher that wall grows, the deeper the crack running through a country that once called itself united.
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