Photo: some company commander of the 155th Mechanized Brigade, taken into custody in January on suspicion of unauthorized leaving the unit and inciting his subordinates to do so. Source: the State Bureau of Investigation
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Special thanks to our French comrades from the Solidarity Initiative Olga Taratuta in preparing this material
In the second half of 2024, the Ukrainian army was moving towards a loss of combat capability and outright collapse at the front. Then, during the winter came a tightening of the screws in terms of discipline. The threat of a collapse on the frontline only loomed again when the US under the new Trump administration suspended military aid. The State Bureau of Investigation claims that about 21,100 fugitive military servicemen returned to the army thanks to a new law allowing them to avoid punishment for the first escape. The deadline for this expired on March 1. But even now, a criminal case for AWOL (absence without leave) will not be initiated if the period of absence is less than three days, and the soldier will not be deprived of pay. If the absence lasts for more than 3 days, a criminal case will be opened. It can be closed if the fighter ran away only for the first time and the commander allows him to continue serving.
With the failure of patriotic brainwashing after three years of war, the Ukrainian state is still able to hold the front using fear and monetary incentices. An experienced military man from Kharkov described what this looks like:
«I personally know a man who went back to the army, to the air defense, because there is no work. Now he is not very happy, they are transferring him to the infantry. And he is not a patriot and does not give a shit about the country, the issue is exclusively about money. I also know a comrade who went AWOL, was bored for 3 months, looked for a job, did not find one, came back. Because need to eat something. The situation was real, there was nothing to eat, no money. I am sure that with the prospect of no work and no income, the number of “volunteers” will increase. So the worse people live, the better the staffing of the AFU will be. Something like that.
I can’t speak for everyone and everything, just what I saw and I base my opinion on it. There is a backbone of the unit, it consists of motivated and experienced fighters. As long as this backbone can control the “replenishment”, this unit will be combat-ready. Simply put, there is hazing, there is a result. As soon as there are more new arrivals than possible control, some turn into slackers. There is a second option. This is the formation of units from the busified ones, which will cover the experienced units. This happened in the Kursk region. The experienced ones made some noise and “to home”, and then the busified ones get into trouble.
Of course, it is more difficult at the front line, but it is also difficult to “leave” from there. Most of the AWOLs are frontline units. The simplest assumption of how this can happen. They get to the city, say Slavyansk [in the Ukraine-controlled part of Donbass], and from there by taxi either Kharkov or Dnieper. As for the period since January of this year, AWOL has become smaller. But. Firstly, this topic was strictly forbidden to comment, and secondly, they began to punish very harshly, up to white slippers [death penalty] (all exclusively rumors).
I judge from the reports of acquaintances. You see, the problem of AWOL is not entirely obvious. Holding back an unmotivated mass of fighters, there is a risk of a riot. To educate and motivate fighters – you need a backbone and time, at least half a year, but there is no time. So it turns out that it was easier to “let go” of a couple and not to disintegrate the entire team, than to motivate. Now they have started to fight AWOL, which will lead, in my personal opinion, to bigger problems than the escape itself. Therefore, experienced fighters and units do not want to get involved with new arrivals, since this is a burden and an increase in risk. As a result, new arrivals have a high percentage of losses, which leads to a decrease in motivation and so on in a circle.
In general, everyone understands everything. The motive is one – to survive. The problem is different. To survive for an “experienced” fighter is a continuation of the war, there he knows everything, and in peace he will have to answer for a lot and lose a lot of material resources. And for a busified one, to survive means to stop the war. Because in a war he has little chance. There are often transitions from the busified to the “experienced” ones»
Mass disobedience by entire military units in Ukraine is already in the past, and there is also no serious threat to the regime from the dissatisfied civilians. Passers-by respond to daily mobilization kidnapping with pepper spray, knives and fists. Supermarket shoppers respond to wild rise in the cost of living with personal shoplifting. Two more spectacular attacks occurred back in 2024, and only recently came to light through court decisions.
A 79-year-old resident of the Bogodukhov district in the Kharkov region without a criminal past received a 4-year imprisonment with a probationary period of 1 year for burning down his village council building with a bottle of gasoline. The pensioner fully admitted his guilt and sincerely repented. He said the reason for the arson attack was a long-standing conflict with the village council that had refused to assign him a subsidy in 2017. He had gone through many years of bullying by village officials who also were ignoring his complaints.
The other case took place in the city of Kharkov, where a court tried a military serviceman from Transcaprathia for especially aggravated hooliganism. The man had been repeatedly convicted in the past. According to the court records, the man had been outraged at his unit’s commanders for the lack of a response to his request for leave. One day, he drunkenly entered the headquarters with two fragmentation grenades. After saying «do you know what this is?», he detonated them on the table. The commanders managed to run outside and were not hurt. The judge closed the case due to the defendant’s death. The cause of his death was not indicated, only the date: May 29, 2024.
On February 20, an unemployed and previously convicted 19-year-old resident of Kirovograd was stopped by enlistment officers to check his documents. It turned out that he was a violator of military registration rules, and he asked them to wait near his house so that he could take his phone and documents for a trip to the recruitment center. The guy returned with a pistol and fired, the employee managed to move away and hide behind the gate. On the same day, the shooter was arrested for two months on suspicion of attempted murder.
On March 26, the court in Poltava extended the preventive measure for Vadym Kuzub and Yevhen Shcherbak for another 36 days. The first one confessed that two months earlier he killed an enlistment agent in Piryatin and seized his assault rifle, the other is accused of aiding in obstructing the lawful activities of the Armed Forces during the special period. They will remain in custody until May 1 inclusive, i.e. either a petition to the court to extend the pre-trial investigation or a bill of indictment should be filed just on Workers’ Solidarity Day. Meanwhile, all the solidarity of workers with Vadim boiled down to applause him on social networks for a couple of days – instead of at least sending parcels to jail and supporting him at court hearings. These same people are indignant that “there are only silent slaves around,” “why are there so few people’s avengers?” etc.
Yesterday in the Voznesensk district of the Nikolaev region, according to the National Police press service, the cops arrived on a call about some domestic quarrel. They probably thought that as usual they would tie up the serf and hand him over to the enlistment torture basement for a bloody salary increase, but the man threw a grenade at them. 21-year-old patrolman Maxim Ryzhko died, three of his colleagues are wounded with fragments. There is no information whether the suspect was detained.
The only example of an enterprise strike we have recorded in Ukraine since last year occured on April 5 in the western town of Drohobych. It was directly related to fear of the mobilization drive among workers. Afraid of being abducted and forcibly drafted, minibus drivers went on strike after one driver was taken from his workplace to the enlistment center for a medical examination the previous day. «Can drivers work in such a mode? Probably not. Is there an alternative replacement? The human resource is exhausted. There is none. […] And making a reservation for employees is almost impossible,» the chairman of this Sigma LLC stated in a later removed Facebook post. The regional territorial recruitment center of Lviv denied the forceful detention of the driver and added that the reservation is the responsibility of the company’s management.
An ex-recruit from Nikolaev, who fled from a training center last year and crossed the border through the Carpathian Mountains, told us:
«It has been known for a long time that they have crossed the line, but since our people are wild and do not help each other, there is no rebellion against them. If they can maim, then why can’t they? I had a situation when I was still in Ukraine: I was just driving past a bus stop where the TRCists started to press a guy, I stopped and called out to him “jump in”, the guy managed to sit down and run away from them. And all the other videos I watch – they beat the guy, twist him, not a single beast will stop, will not help him escape. But everything is moving towards a civil war against Zelya. Because the lawlessness is growing more and more. But it is all delayed while people cannot unite. Even abroad, Ukrainians are not very friendly with Ukrainians. Here [in Spain where he lives] Ukrainians cheat Ukrainians out of money, housing, work. But the further, the more people unite. Not against Putin, but against the TRCists. They fight off the guys. As one military man said: “Why fight for a country that will spit in your back anyway.” I like the news even more, like in our region in Voznesensk [in late February, a drunk runaway military man threw a fragmentation grenade onto the enlistment office’s territory because of a quarrel with his wife and “negative perception of their activities”, the explosion disabled two service cars, he was taken into custody without bail being set]. Many military want to do the same, or shoot up the TRC, or blow it up. This is not even a desire, but plans for the future – because everyone I know who serves, all express a desire to take revenge on the TRCs for dragging them out. In training, one guy was a mountain guide in Uzhgorod, and his fellow villager from the TRC got caught. He promised him: when he gets back, he will shoot dead this asshole»
Angela Gurina. Photo from the state TV website
On April 4, the regional court of appeal of Chernivtsi confirmed a prison term for Angela Gurina from December 9, 2024. She worked for two local news outlets and was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment for coverage of mobilization violence. According to the verdict, her video which received 8,600 views on TikTok, shows a military facility, the regional assembly point near the Military Law Enforcement Service in Chernivtsi. To depict such facilities on video is forbidden under martial law. The journalist was detained in August 2024. Her advocate insisted that she was filming not a military facility but a possible human rights violation. The video was titled «Saving a guy.» Angela Gurina subsequently deleted it. The lawyer also argued that the location of the object is publicly known, and that it is not a combat unit or military formation. But the court ruled against her, arguing: «The appellant’s assertion that the person did not intend to harm the internal and external security of Ukraine does not refute the commission of the charged offense by her.» The defense intends to continue the process in the Supreme Court.
Far more dangerous for the regime than individual protest efforts is the probability that a possible ceasefire, even if temporary, could trigger a new, more massive wave of spontaneous demobilization. The passive sabotage of war also remains wide-spread. Since the beginning of this year, 9,658 enforcement proceedings on overdue and unpaid administrative fines for violating military registration rules have been opened. This is almost as many as for all of 2023, when there were 10,541 such proceedings. At the same time, only 1,259 fines issued in 2025 were paid, according to the Opendatabot infographic from March 10. This means that only every seventh fine issued was paid, compared to every second in 2024.
However, this is already a topic for a separate parsing. Time will tell what will come of this.