stories like this counter the optimistic crap sold by 'our leaders';

• Ukraine faces a massive desertion crisis with hundreds of thousands of cases.
• Soldiers are leaving their posts at a rate of nearly 600 per day.
• Exhaustion and a lack of rotation are primary causes for the mass exodus.
• The military is so desperate that it is sending support staff to the front lines.
• This internal morale collapse poses a severe threat to Ukraine’s defense.

The Ukrainian military is being starved of personnel not just by battlefield losses, but by a massive and growing wave of desertions as soldiers vote with their feet to escape a conflict they see as hopeless.

Since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, prosecutors have opened more than 253,000 criminal cases for unauthorized abandonment of units and desertion, according to official data from the Prosecutor General’s Office.. This crisis of morale is severely undermining military capabilities and highlights a population that is increasingly unwilling to fight, with the problem accelerating so dramatically that by mid-2025, nearly 576 soldiers were leaving their posts every single day.

The scale of the problem is immense. Official data from the Prosecutor General’s Office shows 202,997 criminal cases were initiated for unauthorized abandonment, often called AWOL, from 2022 through July 2025. During that same period, an additional 50,058 cases were opened for the more serious charge of desertion. The trend is sharply upward, with annual abandonment cases exploding from 7,000 in 2022 to 105,500 in just the first seven months of 2025..........more........