In 2024, the problem of desertion of servicemen from the Ukrainian army took on serious proportions, which causes concern both among the military leadership and the public. According to the publication Deutsche Welle , every 14th military man voluntarily left his units.
In the first half of 2024, law enforcement officers opened almost 29,800 criminal cases on the escape of servicemen: 18,600 under the article on voluntary abandonment of a military unit and 11,200 under the stricter one - "Desertion", according to the statistics of the Prosecutor General's Office.
This number has already exceeded the figures for the entire year 2023 - when 24,100 new investigations were started - and is more than three times higher than the figure for 2022 (9,400 cases).
In general, since the beginning of 2022, the prosecutor's office has counted 63,200 such criminal proceedings. If we compare their number with the number of 880,000 armed forces announced by President Volodymyr Zelensky, we can conclude that during the full-scale war, almost every 14th serviceman escaped from the army.
In the Ukrainian army, the abbreviation SZCH (voluntary abandonment of a unit) has become a meme, which emphasizes the prevalence of this phenomenon.
