More than 60 thousand criminal cases of military escape have been counted in Ukraine since the beginning of 2022, but the number of real cases is probably much higher – three or even four times.
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DW writes about this in its investigation.
In the first half of 2024, law enforcement officers across Ukraine opened almost 29.8 thousand new criminal cases on the escape of military personnel: 18.6 thousand under the article on unauthorized abandonment of a military unit and 11.2 thousand under a more severe article – “Desertion”, according to statistics from the Office of the Prosecutor General. This number has already exceeded the figures for the whole of 2023 – then 24.1 thousand new investigations were launched – and more than three times more than the figure for 2022 (9.4 thousand cases).
In total, since the beginning of 2022, the prosecutor’s office has counted 63.2 thousand such criminal proceedings. If we compare their number with the number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced by President Volodymyr Zelensky at 880 thousand people, we can conclude that during the full-scale war, almost every 14th serviceman fled from the army.
However, even these figures are far from the actual scale of the problem. Some claim that the number of real cases exceeds the number of criminal cases by three times, others – even four times, interviewed personnel officers and lawyers familiar with the situation regarding the escape of servicemen from their units assure DW.
In April 2022, the fighter disappeared to the SZCh and to this day there is no erdr-ki (production number in the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations, a formal sign of initiation of a criminal case) for him. And I had five of those without a case on my list for just one region out of nine, believes Viktor Lyakh, a personnel officer of the 28th Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from Odessa region.
The reason for this discrepancy is the slow procedure for registering crimes in the military sphere, which have been investigated by the civilian State Bureau of Investigation for the past five years, explains Alexander Gorovoy, managing partner of the capital’s law firm “Alias”.
The reasons for “committing military personnel to SZCh” are often subjective factors, such as “the desire to temporarily avoid performing duties for rest” or “the low moral and psychological state of military personnel called up for mobilization,” say the journalists’ interlocutors. First of all, this is “emotional overload and exhaustion… associated with a long stay in the combat zone without rotation” and “insufficient level of assistance from the command in solving family and social problems,” the military man notes.
Civilian lawyers specializing in legal assistance to the military add that many criminal cases regarding leaving a place of service are initiated on purely formal grounds: a delay in a business trip, an error in a hospital discharge, or even loss of contact with a soldier “at zero.”
As a rule, none of the commanders expect an explanation from the violator, do not clarify the circumstances and do not try to resolve the issue of return on their own, says lawyer Marina Lilichenko.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.