A-Infos (en) UK, ACG: Racing Against Death. Ukrainian Desertion and Related Matters in 2026 (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The disintegration of Ukrainian military ranks over the past four and a 
half years has become one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in 
Ukraine's history since 1991: between the start of the full-scale 
Russian invasion and last November-when statistics regarding Articles 
407 and 408 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine were classified-nearly 
300,000 cases of absence without leave (AWOL or SZCh in Ukrainian) and 
desertion were registered. According to the latest available data from 
the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, twice as many military 
personnel fled the army last year as during the first two and a half 
years of the war. Romania's decision to stop automatically granting 
temporary protection-effective August 5-to men entering the country 
outside of official border crossings is likely to affect this specific 
strata most of all. Those ready to leave this NATO's private military 
country had already done so-with the exception of deserters and some 
civilians who, until the very last moment, believed in a miracle that 
the peace agreement is just around the corner. Although the procedure 
has not yet been detailed, and it is possible that deserters might 
actually find themselves even in a privileged position, given that the 
Reserve+ app lists them as having been "removed from the military 
registry"-like other military personnel (it remains unclear whether this 
suffices or if one must specifically appear as "excluded" from the 
military registry, meaning ineligible for military service at all). As a 
mobilised programmer from Kharkov who recently fled to Moldova explains 
on June 9:

"Most of those who wanted to leave have already left; plus, the screws 
are being tightened even further this year-and that's not even counting 
the State Border Guard Service and the like. Moving around the streets 
has become harder, let alone traveling across the country, so my take is 
that the number of people even attempting it has dropped. It's more 
likely that fewer are going; there are many factors at play. Some people 
don't go to work because of the TRC-they lack the funds for the journey 
and for life abroad, and so on. A dude went mushroom picking with 
us-he'd served in air defense and was perfectly happy until they started 
transferring personnel to the infantry. As soon as we got out, he 
started singing how he wants to go back because life abroad is too hard 
for him. So that's what they're like, the professional Ukrainians."

However, considering that the total strength of the State Border Guard 
Service of Ukraine is 75,000 personnel, this figure exceeds the number 
of those who have clandestinely fled to Romania-approximately 30,000 
since the start of the war up to the spring of this year. Border guards 
themselves are among them; for instance, in April of this year, a 
28-year-old major from Izmail stepped away to the restroom during a 
meeting between Ukrainian and Romanian border guards-held as part of a 
joint investigation-and asked his Romanian counterparts for protection. 
A source we spoke to in Odessa even mentioned that some people enlist 
there specifically with the intention of desertion:

"My acquaintance signed a contract with the State Border Service of 
Ukraine. He was 23 at the time; he just signed the contract with a unit 
and that was it. He served for a year like that, until a combat 
deployment order for the Kursk sector came through. Luckily, he managed 
to slip away one night while on duty. He had actually changed his mind 
about running away-the original goal of the contract had been to flee 
from Ukraine-and had started training as a dog handler; the wage was 
decent, they grant vacations, he went there as if it was a job. But all 
good things come to an end. The commander was replaced, and combat 
deployment orders to Kursk started flying in one after another. As I 
understand it, the objective was to clean up vacancies. And just so you 
get the picture: during his year of service, he was taken to the 
training range only twice. He wasn't the only one, either; desertion 
from the Border Guard Service isn't rare. The guy is chilling in Norway 
now. The only thing was that they kept him in detention a bit longer and 
interrogated him more thoroughly because he was a serviceman. And the 
most interesting part is that when he received the deployment order, he 
still had one to three shifts left to pull. And-wouldn't you know it-he 
escaped that trip while the border was still right there. Five to seven 
other guys from his unit had left before him".

A reader from Kharkov shared quite a similar story on March 8:

"Last Thursday, my tenant-a young guy-moved out. He lived near the 
'Equator'[shopping mall]for three years. We had long talks about life. 
He's against the war and those in power. He works in the police, in the 
metro[Ed. note: we are omitting the specific station for safety 
reasons]. He's constantly getting fined for failing to meet mobilisation 
quota. Deliberately doesn't stop young people; instead, he target older 
men-those closer to 60- supposedly, we'll get out of it on health 
grounds anyway, and nobody really needs us anymore. He's turning 25 in 
half a year and is really worried. They keep getting sent to some police 
assault brigade. He has only one thing on his mind: how to quit and 
leave to join his aunt in the Netherlands..."

Moreover, Alexander Fatsevich, the then-acting chairman of Ukraine's 
patrol police, complained complained in an April interview:

"We have a big shortage, the rollback started in 2024-2026. There are 
not enough crews on the line, especially in Kyiv, because there are many 
reports here. Plus, our patrols stand at checkpoints, accompany cargo, 
and have other tasks, such as working with TRC. The latter reduces trust 
in the police to zero.[...]Why are policemen and patrolmen resigning? We 
analyzed it. Most resign because they do not want to engage in 
mobilisation. We invite community police officers to funerals. To the 
funerals of the guys they mobilised. They hate the head of the district 
department, the community police officer, and the patrol officer there. 
They cannot stand it and resign. Someone takes a summons and goes to war."

Incidents of fragging are far rarer. Still, we have tracked something. 
On May 2, a Telegram channel created by Russian occupation forces posted 
the following: "On April 20, 2026, near the settlement of Malaya 
Shapkovka (Kupyansk district, Kharkov region), an armed mutiny broke out 
among the personnel of a composite assault unit formed from troops of 
several Ukrainian brigades. During the conflict, Captain Sergey 
Malovichko (born in 1980), the deputy commander of an assault company, 
was killed. The deceased was a special forces soldier with the 15th 
'Qara-Dag' Operational Assignment Brigade (1st Corps of the National 
Guard of Ukraine/Azov) and had been coordinating assault groups 
attempting to relieve positions and break through Russian Armed Forces 
defenses on the Kupyansk sector of the front. According to operational 
data, the mutiny was triggered by an act of insubordination by a group 
of soldiers who refused to carry out a combat mission due to Captain 
Malovichko's incompetent actions; his previous decisions had already 
resulted in heavy personnel losses. The conflict escalated into an armed 
clash during which subordinates inflicted multiple fatal gunshot wounds 
on Malovichko." Russian state-linked media published the same story, 
citing an unnamed "source within Russian law enforcement agencies." The 
website of Ukrainian state TV confirms the death of Captain Sergey 
Malovichko on April 20 while on a combat mission in the Kupyansk 
district, though it lists his year of birth as 1979. The report notes 
that he was from the Zaporozhye region, had been fighting since 2015, 
underwent training in Latvia, and held several state awards. The 
obituary does not clarify whether he died from gunshot wounds. In other 
words, no direct refutation of the Russian version was given.

27-year-old Bogdan Koshel was sentenced on June 9 to life imprisonment 
in Chernigov for killing two instructors with an assault rifle at the 
Goncharivske training ground. Last summer, we showed what it looked 
like. Bogdan was mobilised from Kiev in June 2025. According to the man, 
after the start of the full-scale war, he wanted to go to Russia because 
he did not want to serve and there was no language barrier. He did not 
succeed in doing this. In the army, Bogdan was considered a recruited by 
the Russians, and this made him angry. At first, he thought about 
shooting himself. He reacted to the verdict simply: "It was expected. I 
knew about it from day one. It's normal. We'll sit and see." Remarkable 
composure, considering that over the past year not any foreign 
anti-militarist has expressed support for him-even those who directly 
call for such acts to be committed...

What about fraternisation? On April 16, the YouTube channel of the 10th 
Army Corps of the Armed Forces of Ukraine released a video about a 
41-year-old user of synthetic drugs ("salt") from the Tver region of 
Russia who had spent months hiding with locals in Kupyansk. Reportedly, 
Taras Podoprigora, an electrician, had been using drugs while working at 
the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant. He signed a military contract on March 
27 of last year after a criminal case was opened against him for 
distributing drugs in an especially large quantity (20 grams). "The 
commander, 'Moscow,' treated us like cattle, you could say. On September 
12, I was taken to Kupyansk. In Kupyansk, I arrived at Garden Street, 
where 'Picasso' was already waiting. We sat there for a month. We stayed 
in a house there until October 13. On October 13, we got hit-we were 
under fire-and moved into a four-story building. We stayed there for a 
week; on the 21st, your guys stormed the place. And that was it-we all 
scattered in different directions." Afterward, they approached the 
remaining residents and asked for food. "They told us we could go live 
in that house-the one next door. We lived in that house until February 
24. We spent the winter with the local residents; they kept the stove 
going." Taras says he surrendered to Ukrainian forces voluntarily: "They 
threw us in there as meat. I don't know why they do it. I didn't want to 
go to prison; I thought the war would end in May and I wouldn't make it 
that far. To kill everyone, probably-that's what I thought-just to get 
rid of all the unnecessary people; that was our whole goal in coming 
here. Just to get rid of everyone who wasn't needed." Another case in 
the Kharkov region allegedly took place during the first spring of the 
war in Shestakovo, where a local man sheltered a Russian deserter after 
the area was liberated. However, in the comments under a post about 
this, a Ukrainian military serviceman from Kharkov wrote that the guy is 
lying, since he took part in combat operations until his tank was 
knocked out.

Such stories are taking place on other fronts as well. In the spring, 
BBC News Ukraine and the Ukrainian state TV channel published the case 
of 34-year-old Vadym Lietunov from Odessa. A veteran of the earlier 
conflict in Donbass, he had managed a construction supply store before 
the full-scale invasion and rejoined the army on the very first morning 
of the war. That spring, he was fighting with the 118th Mechanised 
Brigade on the Zaporozhye direction. On March 13, an explosion destroyed 
his dugout, killing his comrade. Vadym managed to dig himself out and 
cross minefields to reach a nearby shelter, where he encountered a 
Russian soldier named Nikita. Nikita is described as an unstable drug 
addict who had enlisted from prison; he had previously tried to flee 
from his post but had been forced back. The resident of Odessa spent two 
weeks sharing the dugout with him until a Ukrainian drone spotted a sign 
bearing his call sign, "Cartman." Nikita surrendered, and Vadym was sent 
to a hospital to treat frostbite on his feet. It would not be such a bad 
idea for all the soldiers to set up a table in the neutral zone, have a 
hundred-gram shot each, and then go to their government districts or, at 
the very least, back home...

Then, truly amazing things began. Since the beginning of summer, 
grant-funded Ukrainian media outlets-alongside British ones like The 
Times or Sky News-suddenly took note of regular beatings to death and 
extrajudicial executions within the assault regiments of the AFU, also 
known as "Syrskyi's regiments." Or death units. The reason is simple: an 
information attack on Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi, with whom the European 
puppet-Defense Minister Fedorov-has clashed over drone budgets. For 
example, they published the following story of an escape from a regiment 
from which escape is considered impossible: "By all indications, 
36-year-old Arkadiy Kukshin should not have been mobilised - he worked 
at a critical infrastructure enterprise, was a full-time student, and 
besides, he was removed from the military register before 2022 due to a 
criminal record. But on April 28, he was detained by TRC military in 
Kharkiv. Arkadiy resisted, during a fight his tooth was knocked out and 
tear gas was poured into his eyes. The man was sent to 'The Rock' 425th 
Separate Assault Regiment. He received combat training at the regiment's 
training ground in the Sumy region. "There are 600-700 people under 
escort there, everyone from that location wants to escape, but everyone 
thinks it's unrealistic," says Arkadiy. He spent a week there. He 
decided to escape on May 4 at 4:30 in the morning. The area around the 
training ground was mined. "I went out on the mines, ran through the 
forest, at about 7 am I went out into the village, came across The 
Rock's patrol, they started shooting at me. I was wounded twice. I ran 
through the fields, forests, swamps, miraculously escaped from them, I'm 
in trouble," Arkadiy says about his escape. The man reached Kharkiv and 
went not to his own place, but to an apartment of acquaintances. He lay 
there with a bullet wound for five days, his wife came to inject him 
with antibiotics. And then the doctor secretly pulled the bullet out of 
his leg. Several fragments still remained in his left palm. Because of 
them, his hand does not function well.[...]The police came to his wife's 
apartment, looking for Arkadiy. The law enforcement officers asked the 
woman if she knew at work that she was hiding a military serviceman in 
AWOL.[...]Arkadiy uploaded a photo of himself against the background of 
the Carpathians with the caption: "I came out." In the end, the man 
illegally left the country." The same material states that a guard 
killed Oleksandr Zavalov, from the Kirovohrad region, with an assault 
rifle as he attempted to escape through a toilet window.

The 225th Assault Regiment also drew the attention of former USAID 
clients this summer, even though the Assembly had reported on its "tree 
of truth," graves for those who tried to flee their training center in 
the region of Kharkov, and the opening of fire on fighters abandoning 
their positions since last December. From our conversation with their 
former assault trooper, who escaped to Romania last year:

"I left the Sumy region-not just the unit, but from scratch... There are 
no barrier detachments. They simply issue an order to destroy anyone 
moving about who isn't at their position. And even then, only your 
battalion or company commander can give such an order. That's what my 
company commander did when he found out I'd bailed. The neighbouring 
units don't care; they'd just report over the radio that they'd spotted 
a soldier, but by the time the reply came through, I was already long 
gone! The scariest thing is the FPV drones...!!!! They fly in whole 
swarms; it's a massive problem! But it is survivable if you know how. I 
was in absolute hell (the 225th Regiment). My advice is to get out! I 
only made it out because I've had combat experience since 2015! I'm not 
urging anyone to abandon their positions or become a deserter! DEATH TO 
THE RUSSIAN OCCUPIERS!!!!!! But in my case, my command sent us to 
certain DEATH! Zelya is the country's number-one ORC!!!! My decision and 
actions led me to where I'm now-in a foreign country, without the 
language and without my family. (My wife took a lover while I was 
getting killed near Sumy). I got out on my own. They issue these orders 
against our own people...!!!! If one of our own left-deserted-the order 
is to open fire to kill! And don't forget that our own drone (a Mavic) 
is constantly hovering overhead... Orders like that were issued against 
my position at least four times... I understood why the guys are getting 
out of that hell, and I held no grudges against them! Have a good trip, 
men...!!!! I hope you got as lucky as I did...!!!!"

While we were telling last winter on the situation within the 225th and 
425th Regiments, the same grant-funded media dismissed it all as 
"Russian propaganda" and labeled those writing about it "Kremlin 
agents." Do you still believe that the professional crusaders against 
"hostile disinformation" actually believe what they write?

A retired military serviceman from Kharkov confirms our interlocutor's 
words:

"It's problematic to make a run for it now. For at least 200 years, the 
British military model-which this system follows-has been designed for 
an army recruited from an enslaved people to wage war against that very 
same people. You either serve the system or you're a subordinate slave. 
That's it. Here's a real-life story: a comrade got picked up. He was 
sent to an assault unit-something like the 225th or 'The Rock'. The 
training camps for these assault units are basically prisons in the 
woods: no communication, surrounded by barbed wire, and sometimes with a 
mined perimeter. In Kharkov, the units doing this are 'Khartiia' and the 
225th; most of the people 'picked up' in the city were taken by those 
guys. Even if you manage to slip away, you still have to get somewhere 
to avoid being picked up by a patrol. He paid a hefty sum to get 
smuggled out of the training camp and brought home. They called every 
number in his contacts, showed up at his wife's workplace, kicked down 
his apartment door while the cops watched, made threats, and so on-but 
they didn't find him. Now he's holed up in a deep cellar at an 
acquaintance's place. According to him, anyone who tried to desert and 
got caught in the woods never made it out-they were just written off as 
SZCh. It's not that simple. The guys running this know exactly how to 
break people. It's easier for them to just kill you than let you escape. 
Actually, the TRCs operate on the same principle now: more brutality, 
more fear, less resistance."

The 425th Regiment is currently fighting alongside the 58th Motorised 
Infantry Brigade north of Kharkov, having been redeployed there due to 
the Russian army's advance from the Belgorod region. On July 11, another 
fugitive mobilised man from Kharkov told us about transportation of his 
former comrades to this front from a training center 800 km away:

"All 18 of them made it there; they were driven in a regular bus-no 
security guard or anything like that-and are now undergoing combat 
integration training. By the way, it's still easy enough to just run off 
from there. But everyone believes in a miracle... I feel bad for the 
guys... but those are just details... They're all brave, with the 
attitude of 'if not us, then who? What else can we do-walk around 
scared?' There's an offensive underway, it seems; well, defending the 
homeland is a sacred duty-Kharkov is in danger[...]The guys don't have 
any special roles yet; they're all riflemen heading to the front 
line-two young guys, two older ones, and off they go. They're being sent 
there to be slaughtered. Together with the 425th. By the way, a local 
guy-judging by the stats-said that 30 men went AWOL in a single week; 
that's a significant number for that brigade. This came from a old 
serviceman who handles sending mobilised ones from the staging bases to 
the front. They're leaving in droves, according to the brigade's 
officers; I hope at least some of my guys come to their senses and get 
in touch."

Finally, some universal rules from the previously mentioned Kharkov 
resident who made his way to Moldova:

"The right way to go AWOL is quietly. The wrong way is to be rude, make 
your stance known, take your weapon with you, hold a position of 
material responsibility, and so on. I, for instance, left all state 
property behind-didn't take even a sock-didn't argue with anyone, and 
just quietly slipped away. You have to blend in as much as possible with 
that rabble, saluting and chanting 'Ukraine Above All' and 'Our Father 
Bandera.' The brainwashing there is like something out of the Third 
Reich; by the second day, the guys were parroting quotes from the TV 
marathon about how Russia is supposedly on the verge of collapse. 90% of 
them mimic the 'Banderites,' and everyone is terrified to go against the 
grain. If you try to talk about escape one-on-one, the person you're 
talking to will think it's a setup and decide it's safer to turn you in. 
In reality, 70-80% want to flee, but they can't team up with strangers 
because of the atomisation-it's every man for himself. And those who 
decide to act the 'wrong way' get brutally broken. The stories about 
killings or people being maimed at the TRCs prove it."

Of the five persons detained and remanded in custody for 60 days 
following clashes with the TRC and police in Lviv on the evening of July 
8, three turned out to be military servicemen. The youngest and one of 
the older suspects at that moment were in AWOL, the third serviceman was 
on leave. According to the investigation, 23-year-old Oleg Gavrilov hit 
the deputy head of the district police department in the face and 
sprayed tear gas into an inspector's eyes. His advocate says that he 
sincerely repents for what he did and does not deny his guilt. Regarding 
two 28-year-old detainees-along with two civilians aged 21 and 45-the 
Security Service of Ukraine states: "These involved were the most active 
participants in the incident. They blocked the path of a military 
service vehicle, jumped on it, and damaged the vehicle." Here is how it 
happened.

It would seem that defending the people rather than the regime should 
not be all that difficult. Yet, the majority of the pixels will not do 
it, as they are living their best years thanks to the war. Class-based 
analyses of militarism still tend to boil down to unsubstantiated 
moralising-claiming that "war is always waged against the poor" and 
"benefits only the bourgeoisie"-while ignoring the fact that hundreds of 
thousands of Ukrainians left the ranks of the proletariat precisely 
because of the war, and have no desire to return to them. Two 
testimonies from Kharkov-one from an elderly man and one from a woman:

"A neighbour recently overheard some soldiers arguing-asking why do they 
need to end the war, what they'd do back in civilian life if they're 
pulling in 21k here ) And that's exactly how it is. If you don't go on 
assaults like meat, there are no problems at all. If you land a decent 
spot, you're not just getting 21k, but at least 50. That's assuming you 
'worked out a good deal.' You get paid based on where you're officially 
listed, not where you actually are)) Good luck finding that kind of 
money in civilian life. Plus, you don't have to spend on a lot of 
things. In fact, they recruit about 10-20% as suicide troops, get them 
wiped out, and just keep the cycle going. The 80% of 'old hands' are 
doing fine. It's the same in civilian life, by the way: the 90% who 
don't have to go to the army are doing great."

"I spoke to our local police officer, and he said: 'Look, half the guys 
hanging out at that dive bar by the bus stop are AWOL, but they won't 
take them anymore-they've run off multiple times, and their units simply 
don't want them back... Sure, they might get picked up, get the crap 
beaten out of them by the TRC, and that's it. Because they can't even 
jail them... So, they just don't bother with the barflies.' And there 
are more and more of such barflies... They support their families and 
scrape by on odd jobs... Like all the rest of them-scrapping metal here, 
doing a quick job for a bottle there, swiping whatever isn't nailed 
down... Some live as 'communes'... Right now, the untouchables-the ones 
with special status-are either the majors[kids of rich parents]or the 
marginals. The TRC doesn't touch either group. But the middle-ordinary 
people, from blue-collar workers to the intelligentsia and small 
entrepreneurs-they're the potential targets.."

Another Kharkov resident who ran away from the 79th Air Assault Brigade 
after combat missions points out the same things in a local chat:

"I've been AWOL for exactly two years. My logic is simple: back when I 
was in the Air Assault Forces, I wanted to transfer to the Drone Systems 
Forces, but the commander would have sent me to a frontline position 
with no rotation date if I'd asked. The funny thing is, I hang out at 
the playground with my kid alongside other dads just like me-and 
alongside these mighty warriors who serve in rear-echelon roles and 
simply moved their families closer. That whole damn bunch of military 
feels f***ing great about army life. We've got two armies: one big and 
well-connected, and another that's poor. I think if everyone ended up in 
the kind of army I see here every day, the TRCs would be swamped with 
volunteers. You can tell the rear-echelon servicemen are actually loving 
what's happening. So, there we are at the playground with kids: one's a 
drone commander, another's a supplier, and an AWOL. For some reason, a 
bunch of fat-assed military guys don't think about their 
brothers-in-arms when I see them clustering together and drinking coffee 
by a cafe in the morning-yet people tried to convince me that I don't 
think about my guys. So, he is thinking about them-by sending me there 
instead of himself? The moment those rear-echelon guys get sent to 
combat, they'll go AWOL immediately. Last year, they threatened to 
transfer the air defense personnel, and the outcry was huge. I haven't 
spoken to anyone for almost two years now. And there wasn't really 
anyone to talk to at the front, either-just meth-heads, drunks, gambling 
addicts, die-hard patriots, military fanatics. I'm going to try coming 
back from AWOL; in a couple of days, I'll submit a transfer request to 
the Drone Systems Forces. We'll see if it's scarier than the Air Assault 
Forces or not."

The conclusion is the same as the one we drew a year ago. The flight of 
troops-replaced by new ones every month-does not in itself derail the 
war; rather, it ties the hands of the regimes involved and hinders any 
breaking out of the protracted positional stalemate. The stalemate that 
has dragged on so long that either side is ready to sharp escalation in 
a desperate bid to achieve a decisive breakthrough in its 
favor-precisely what we are witnessing this summer with the 
intensification of mutual strikes on civilian infrastructure of Russia 
and Ukraine.

assembly.org.ua

We republish an article from Ukrainian anarchist group Assembly

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2026/08/12/racing-against-death-ukrainian-desertion-and-related-matters-in-2026/
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