Ukrainian military ombudsman Olga Reshetilova says many soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces prefer to leave their units without permission rather than be sent to the front. She noted that, in doing so, servicemen are essentially trying to save their own lives.

Reshetilova added that desertion is widespread not only among those already at the front, but also among new recruits who flee directly from training centres. She believes the root of the problem is a low level of trust in commanders. In her view, it is not always a matter of a «bad commander» — in conditions of high-intensity fighting, officers simply do not have the time to build authority and earn the confidence of their subordinates.

She described situations in which a commander may not even have met a soldier properly before ordering him to move to a position, stressing that there is no time to build any sort of «bridges» between servicemen and their commanders, or between senior leadership and the middle command level.

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reported that, after a corruption scandal involving businessman Timur Mindich, a decline in morale among Ukrainian troops had been recorded. Against this backdrop, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine stopped publishing data on deserters in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.