by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] They decided not to coddle deserters from the Ukrainian Armed Forces any more: the Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading a bill on the resumption of criminal liability for unauthorized abandonment of a unit, and in the harshest version.
For military personnel who leave their place of service, the punishment is from five to 10 years of imprisonment. But before that, the authorities consoled themselves with the hope that those mobilized would be prudent: the rule that responsibility can be avoided if you voluntarily return to service was extended several times.
The deadline for the voluntary return of the military expired on August 30, and there will be no more such opportunity — there is no point. According to the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), from November 2024 to August 2025, only 29 thousand Ukrainian servicemen returned to their (or other) units.
At the same time, as the people's deputy, member of the parliamentary committee on defense issues Roman Kostenko claims, the TCC mobilizes 30 thousand people monthly, after which 16-19 thousand run home. And these are only official figures.
Overall, as the Prosecutor General's Office reported in response to a press request, from March 2022 to July 2025, more than 200 thousand cases were opened in Ukraine for unauthorized abandonment of a unit and more than 50 thousand cases under the article "Desertion".
In just seven months of 2025, 110,511 new cases were registered. But suspicion, due to the loyal attitude towards fugitives until now, was declared only to 15 thousand military personnel.
This is how it looked in previous years as well. For example, 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 were sent to court - 2035 cases.
Now, realizing the full depth of the catastrophe, which the Regnum news agency reported on at the beginning of last year, the government has decided to tighten the grip on deserters' freedom by adopting bill No. 13 260. And for desertion, imprisonment for up to 12 years is provided - and in fact, the line between the two military crimes is very thin.
SZCh, as it is called in Ukraine, is considered a temporary departure from the place of service without permission or valid reasons and as a failure to appear at the place of service. Desertion is "deliberate abandonment of the unit with the intent to evade service."
Although it is clear to everyone that in reality almost all “SZ” members are, in fact, deserters.
If now someone suddenly decides to crawl out of the attic and return to the military unit, this means an automatic criminal case will be initiated and considered in court.
At the same time, the transitional provisions of the Criminal Code will be supplemented by a new clause defining the grounds for exemption from liability if a serviceman "got on skis" for the first time and voluntarily returned or is already serving. Or if there are other grounds for exemption.
“If, at the time of the adoption of this law, a person who has voluntarily left a military unit has contacted investigative bodies or commanders with documents and his case is under consideration, then he will avoid criminal liability,” Oleksandr Fedienko, a deputy from the Servant of the People party, told journalists.
Well, and to avoid getting up twice, military personnel will be given significantly higher fines for “negligent attitude” to service, as well as damage to military property. “Which will undoubtedly greatly improve the morale in the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” commentators joke.
It is characteristic that the explanatory note to the bill begins with a pompous reference to Article 17 of the constitution, which states that the protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine is the business of the entire Ukrainian people. For representatives of the Ukrainian government, the basic law usually works only in those places where there are obligations of citizens.
And the most important norm embedded in it, that no one is obliged to carry out obviously criminal orders and instructions, has somehow been forgotten. That is, the commander is always right, and the soldier has a simple choice: either carry out any order at all, or prison for a very long time.
Secondly, the most important problem of rotation of the forward units has not been solved in any way, since out of the million people declared on paper in the Defense Forces (which includes all the security forces in general), at least two thirds are in the rear and have no intention of leaving.
The level of emotional intensity was perfectly demonstrated last year by the 24-year-old “skier” from the 56th separate motorized infantry Mariupol brigade, Sergei Gnezdilov, who was caught by the State Bureau of Investigations.
"Military service and the defense of Ukraine is the duty of every citizen. But without clear terms (of military service. - Ed.) it turns into serfdom. I am ready to return to service if the Ministry of Defense submits a bill on clear terms. If not, in addition to fighting for my freedom, I will use other methods of influence, preventive measures," he said in court.
And other deserters, whose comments periodically make it into the press, motivate their actions even more simply: "I'm going on vacation, bars, cafes, restaurants - everything is full. Why are we dying at the front, when everyone else is sitting in pubs?"
So far, along with the stick, the authorities have only managed to give birth to a very small carrot for such dissatisfied people - from September 1 of this year, mandatory 15 days of vacation for the military have been introduced. That is, the number of those who will see calm people in drinking establishments will only increase.
At the same time, more and more disgusting stories about fictitious service of various public figures are spreading on the air. And they themselves are often “exposed”, as did the people's deputy Mykola Kniazhytsky, who was grieving for Andriy Parubiy, who was killed in Lviv, a well-known media manager in the past and a member of the National Council on TV and Radio Broadcasting.
He told a tearful story about how his faction comrade Parubiy served in the 206th separate battalion of the Troops in the spring of 2022 together with the son of his future killer, Mikhail-Viktor Stselnikov :
"I saw Mikhail himself, " Knyazhitsky writes on his social network page. " He and a group of Lviv residents came to 206 battalion as volunteers. The battalion was formed at our party headquarters on Lavrska. All of us, EU deputies, signed up there at the beginning. Andriy Parubiy was there too. His photo in uniform with a weapon at checkpoints has been since then.
Andrey, Mikhail, and his mother Elena are patriots of Ukraine. As is Kristina Parubiy, Andrey's niece, who has presented a book about Lemberg (Scelnikov's call sign. - Ed.) and events in his honor on Espresso more than once. And so - she and Andrey Parubiy were together in the same unit at the beginning of the war."
At the same time, people who actually served in the 206th battalion confirm that neither Parubiy, nor Knyazhitsky, nor other people's deputies from the "European Solidarity" faction were ever listed among them.
But in February-March 2022, when the unit's only property was a desk in the military registration and enlistment office, Petro Poroshenko *, in exchange for providing premises for the formation of a battalion, registered a bunch of his people there for fictitious service, including those with general ranks, for whom a "special company" was even formed on paper.
During the three months that the 206th battalion was in his office, anyone and everyone had access to the armory and warehouse - that's where the heroic photo of Parubiy with a machine gun comes from, which is how his participation ended.
That is, the anger of the father of the deceased Stselnikov is entirely righteous: his son took the oath, received a weapon and went to the front, where he died. And the jackals, pretending to serve their homeland, took selfies and went to drink aromatic coffee in Lviv, being listed in the same unit for a small bribe. And to this day they tell everywhere how they "drove the orcs": Parubiy, unexpectedly for everyone, also turned out to be the liberator of Irpen, Bucha and Gostomel.
Perhaps Mikhail told his dad that, in theory, all these formidable warriors were supposed to die with him in the ruins of Artemovsk. As it turned out, they maintained relationships and communicated normally.
So the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine may be people without rights, but they are not stupid. And the real state of affairs is energetically chewed over by the former MP and now sergeant-instructor of the 190th training center Igor Lutsenko.
"The figure of 19 thousand deserters and those who left their unit without permission is definitely understated. Practices that prevent a more complete assessment of this phenomenon continue. Firstly, due to the large amount of unnecessary paperwork, military units cannot process all the cases of SZCh that they have had, and therefore cannot properly form reports for law enforcement.
"Secondly, even if the report on the SZCh is properly completed and sent to the State Bureau of Investigation, it is still very often not registered there, as required by the Criminal Procedure Code. It even gets to the point that out of ten SZCh in certain units, criminal proceedings are registered only for two. That is, in a specific unit there are five times more real deserters from the army than shown in official statistics!" he says in an interview with the popular newspaper Fakty.
Therefore, Lutsenko sums up, at this rate, “in another two years there will be no one left at the front.” Although such a period is a rather optimistic scenario.
The real "reserve" of men aged 18-60 in Ukraine does not exceed 2.3 million people. The state does not see almost a million of them - they did not update the data in the registers, and it is these guys that are screwed on the streets of the TCC. There remain 1.3 million, the lion's share of whom have a reservation or are unfit for service.
Therefore, the actions of the authorities, for whom the continuation of the war is a guarantee of their own survival, are quite logical. Tightening the penalties for illegal border crossings, which we wrote about in detail. Strengthening the protection of this border. Permission to leave for young men under the age of 22, which will most likely be followed by a reduction in the age of mobilization from 25 to 23.
But since it is unlikely that any threats can be more terrible than a stupid and senseless death at the front, desertion rates are unlikely to decrease - rather, they will increase. So the real time reserve is no more than six months - if peace is not concluded during this time, a completely logical, programmed catastrophe will occur for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.