by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] The number of Ukrainian Armed Forces losses, carefully hidden, but of great interest to everyone, is still an interesting topic for researchers. Especially against the backdrop of the recent proposal by the head of the Servant of the People faction, David Arakhamia.
The deputy suggested disclosing this information so that the enemies would disappear and Ukrainian men would stop being afraid of mobilization. “When you go to the streets and ask people about losses, I have never heard less than 100,000. And our losses are much less,” Arakhamia said. And since there is a misunderstanding in society regarding such an important point, this can frighten the newly mobilized.
| How does this compare to Russian numbers of deserters and avoiders? |
After all, for example, it was the mass desertion of SBU officers and civil servants, as stated in the scandalous book by American journalist Simon Shuster, The Showman, that allowed the Russian army to quickly capture the Kherson region in February-March 2022.
“A lot of security people said, 'Let's get out of here. Resistance is futile. The Russians will defeat us, ” Shuster quotes NSDC Secretary Alexei Danilov. “Their departure devastated the ranks of the SBU. Dozens of employees went over to the side of the occupiers, essentially handing over to them the keys to part of southern Ukraine.”
Now a vile stab in the back of Ukraine is being delivered by ordinary citizens who have been forced to be heroes.
The only publicly available information is the number of registered criminal offenses committed in relation to the established procedure for military service. However, even the statistics released by the Office of the Prosecutor General indicate major problems in the Ukrainian army. The cause of these problems (by coincidence) was the liquidation of the military prosecutor’s office in 2019 at the hands of Arakhamia and his fellow party members, who voted unanimously.
In January 2024 alone, 3,448 criminal proceedings were registered under Articles 407 (unauthorized abandonment of a military unit) and 408 (desertion, that is, unauthorized abandonment of a military unit for the purpose of evading military service), which amounts to 88.3% of all war crimes in statistics. And this, we repeat, is only what is included in the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations of Ukraine.
But not everything is included there, so as not to spoil the statistics. According to former Donetsk journalist and distinguished libelist Vladimir Boyko, who is known as a very knowledgeable person, no more than a third of messages are entered into the ERDR.
“By agreement with the Office of the Prosecutor General, the Military Law Enforcement Service sent letters to all military units demanding that reports of criminal offenses committed by military personnel be sent only to the State Bureau of Investigation (State Bureau of Investigation - Ed.), bypassing the specialized prosecutor's office in the field of defense. And in the State Bureau of Investigation these messages are hung on a nail in the toilet. In this regard, it has now become a widespread phenomenon for commanders of military units to go to court to appeal against the inaction of DBI investigators who do not register criminal proceedings. Therefore, the 3.5 thousand criminal proceedings registered in January can be safely multiplied by three,” he writes.
If we add up the number of criminal proceedings registered under Articles 407, 408 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine in 2022 (9397) and 2023 (24,286), it turns out that as of February 1, 2024, at least 37 deserted from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other formations. 2 thousand military personnel. Multiply by at least three - and it turns out to be more than 100 thousand people. Or maybe more, since only the mentioned VSP has accurate data, where commanders send corresponding reports for each case of unauthorized departure from duty.
It turns out that when the country’s leadership declares that a million of its best sons and daughters are already guarding the Ukrainian borders, about 300 thousand are actually fighting, and 100–150 thousand are “on the skis.” This is already almost half of the available forces. No one knows what the other half is doing, but judging by the surge in mobilization, they are clearly in no hurry to go to the front.
The reason for the mass desertion lies on the surface.
Firstly, of course, this is a banal reluctance to die and the absence of any motives to go storm some planting when the chickens at home are not fed and the wife is bored. Slogans about the frontier of the civilized world and the responsibility for protecting the whole of Europe do not warm Ukrainians. Dry numbers in the ERDR speak more eloquently than any speaker at the “single telethon”.
Secondly, no one chases deserters, they are not returned to their unit and are not punished in any way. Out of 3.5 thousand official “skiers”, at the end of January, only 21 people were informed of suspicion under the relevant articles of the Criminal Code. No one is investigating the criminal cases that military unit commanders are seeking to register through the courts.
The situation was similar in the previous two years.
Thus, in 2023, out of 24.3 thousand criminal proceedings against fugitives, suspicion was reported in only 2410 proceedings, that is, in less than 10% of cases. And even fewer cases were sent to court - 2,035 cases.
When the military prosecutor's office was destroyed in Ukraine, supporters of this reform assured that military police would appear in its place. However, in the end, the investigation of war crimes was transferred to the State Bureau of Investigation, a purely civilian institution. The investigator from there cannot enter the territory of the military unit (as the formidable military prosecutors did, opening the door with their feet), they will not even pass the checkpoint on the way to the combat zone. To do this, you must first obtain the appropriate permission from the military, who thus have power over the visiting scribbler.
At the same time, for one investigator, for example, in the investigative department of the Kramatorsk State Bureau of Investigation, which investigates war crimes within the former Donetsk garrison, there are 600, or even 800 criminal proceedings. So they won’t even make attempts to go somewhere and get some kind of password. When a suspect accused of murder is at hand in a pre-trial detention center, and somewhere far away in his native Carpathian village there is a “skier” who threw down his weapon and left his post, the choice is obvious.
IA Regnum's interlocutors claim that on trains coming from the east, you can easily meet people in military uniform who are as free as the wind. Thus, even moving around the country is not difficult for them, since for this they need to turn on the entire mechanism of the law enforcement system. And the deserters then call their former brothers in arms, who continue to serve, and happily tell how good it is at home, provoking new escapes.
In addition, the “twin cities” have an additional argument. Military prosecutors dealt not only with deserters, they were the authority to which a soldier could complain about his father-commanders. The reaction was immediate and merciless.
Suffice it to recall how in February 2016, at the Shirokiy Lan training ground, the personnel of a mechanized company were abused - for five days, the mobilized servicemen did not have normal food, drinking water, a sufficient number of tents and even beds - they slept in the mud. The fighters were all of age, therefore, unable to withstand such an attitude, a delegation of 46 people went on foot to the military prosecutor in Nikolaev.
As a result, the commander of the 53rd separate mechanized brigade, Colonel Valery Vodolazsky, who committed such an outrage, spent 10 days in the guardhouse, because the military prosecutor drew up an administrative report on him and sent him to court. Besides him, nine more officers were punished. The court found not guilty only the deputy commander of the Vostok operational command, Valery Zaluzhny, who was responsible for combat training.
Now Ukrainian soldiers can only talk about the hardships and deprivations of military service, as well as cases of violation of the law, in Tik Tok. Any problems of this kind that happened in 2016 at the Shiroklansky training ground are the work of the drowning people themselves. Only they were supplemented by shells and bombs falling on their heads. Military personnel can only respond to the bestial attitude towards themselves: to move away and try not to get caught again. And you can shout “glory” to Ukraine at home on the sofa.
