The Telegraph has previously quoted another former officer as estimating that Kiev’s forces are short 200,000 troops
The Ukrainian military is facing a severe desertion problem, Sergey Filimonov, the commander of the elite 108th Separate Assault Battalion nicknamed the ‘Da Vinci Wolves’, has warned.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Filimonov asked his subscribers how surprised “would you be if I told you that another newly formed brigade is being put together from the ranks of the 150th? Which, at the stage of formation, already has about 3,000 AWOL?”
In a piece last Friday, the Telegraph’s contributor, Owen Matthews, claimed that “perhaps as many as 20,000 [Ukrainian service members] desert or go absent every four weeks.” According to the publication, since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, Ukrainian authorities have launched 290,000 criminal cases for desertion. Matthews went on to claim that Kiev’s military may be 200,000 soldiers short of the minimum needed to fend off Russian advances.
The journalist cited several current and former Ukrainian officers as complaining that frontline units were operating at half or even a third of their required strength.
Last week, The Telegraph reported that nearly 100,000 young men had left Ukraine after the government allowed men aged 18 to 22 to cross the border in August.
Previously, as part of Ukraine’s general mobilization, all able-bodied men aged 18 to 60 had been barred from doing so.
That same month, the newspaper claimed that since 2022, at least 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age had fled Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian MP Anna Skorokhod told local media that the number of deserters in the country’s military had by then reached almost 400,000.
Territorial Centers of Recruitment and Social Support (TCR) tasked with enforcing Ukraine’s mobilization drive have faced widespread public criticism.
Multiple eyewitness videos have been circulating on social media, depicting draft officers ambushing military-age men on the streets and shoving them into vans – a practice known colloquially as “busification.” Such press gangs are often seen using brute force and even threatening reluctant recruits with firearms.
