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Depleted by war, Ukraine gives absconding soldiers second chance

Pressure on frontline means some units accept absconders; rate of troops fleeing front or bases has jumped in 2024

As Ukraine's military struggles to find enough troops, particularly infantry, to hold off Russia's much larger army, some units are giving a second chance to those who have absconded from service.

Data from the prosecutor's office shows nearly 95,000 criminal cases have been opened since 2022 against soldiers going "absent without leave" (AWOL) and for the more serious crime of battlefield desertion.

The number of cases has risen steeply with each year of the war: almost two-thirds of the total are from 2024. With many tens of thousands of troops killed or wounded, it is a depletion that Ukraine can ill afford.

Now, some units are replenishing their ranks by accepting soldiers previously declared AWOL.

One of them is Ukraine's elite 47th Brigade, which published a social media post last month inviting soldiers who had absconded to join.

"Our aim is to give every soldier the opportunity to come back into the fold and realise his potential," the post announced. In the first two days, the brigade said, over a hundred applications came in.

"There was a tsunami of applications; so many that we still aren't able to process them all before new ones come in," Viacheslav Smirnov, the 47th's head of recruitment, said two weeks after the announcement.

Two military units Reuters spoke to said they were only recruiting soldiers who had gone AWOL from their bases, rather than those who had deserted from combat.

The former is seen within the Ukrainian military as a lesser offence. A bill recently signed into law has in effect decriminalised a soldier's first disappearance, allowing them to return to service.

THOUSANDS OF UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS REJOIN AFTER ABSCONDING

Colonel Oleksandr Hrynchuk, deputy head of Ukraine's military police, told reporters on Tuesday that 6,000 AWOL soldiers had returned to service in the last month, including 3,000 in the 72 hours since the law was signed.

Mykhailo Perets, an officer from the K-2 battalion of Ukraine's 54th Brigade, said his battalion had already hired over 30 men who had gone AWOL from other units.

"The reasons [for absconding] are very different: for some people it was too tough a transition straight from civilian life, others served for a year or two as qualified pilots but were then sent to the front line because there wasn't enough infantry."

Perets said those who had applied also included men who had become exhausted and run away after being at war for seven or eight years, having fought Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine before 2022.

Gil Barndollar, a non-resident fellow at the U.S.-based Defense Priorities think tank, said the increase in unauthorised absences was most likely driven by exhaustion.

Ukrainian service personnel have previously said how the lack of replacements for lost soldiers puts an unbearable strain on those remaining, exhausting them physically and mentally.

Barndollar also highlighted their average age as an additional strain.

"An army of men, often in poor health, in their 40s, all else being equal, is going to get exhausted sooner and is going to have morale problems faster than a reasonably fit army of 20- or 25-year-olds."

Zelenskiy has responded to questions about the manpower problem by arguing that Ukraine lacks weapons rather than people, and pushed back against U.S. pressure to lower the minimum draft age to 18 from 25.

He said in an interview with Sky News last week that Kyiv's allies had been able to provide the necessary equipment for only a quarter of the 10 new brigades Ukraine had formed over the past year.