- Ukraine's new defense minister confirms a catastrophic manpower crisis.
- Official data reveals more than 250,000 desertion cases since the war began.
- Two million Ukrainians are wanted for evading military service.
- Exhausted troops see prison as a safer alternative than the front line.
- This internal collapse poses the gravest threat to Ukraine's national defense.
Ukraine’s new defense minister has laid bare the catastrophic manpower crisis crippling the nation’s war effort. For the first time, a top official has put numbers to the mass exodus, revealing a military buckling under the weight of desertion and widespread draft evasion after nearly four years of brutal conflict with Russia. The disclosure signals a potential collapse from within, as soldiers and citizens alike vote with their feet against a war they see as unwinnable.
Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, confirmed by parliament on Wednesday, said, "The Ministry of Defense is coming into my hands with a [$6.7 million] shortfall, two million Ukrainians who are wanted and 200,000 who are AWOL." This marks the first official acknowledgment of a scale of desertion long rumored but never before confirmed by Kyiv.
A military strained to breaking point
While Fedorov cited 200,000 troops absent without leave, other Ukrainian reports suggest the true figure for desertions is closer to 300,000. Official data from prosecutors shows more than 250,000 criminal cases for unauthorized abandonment have been opened since the war began in 2022, with nearly 600 soldiers leaving their posts daily at one point. The crisis represents a hemorrhage of personnel that battlefield losses alone cannot explain.
The situation on the ground is one of exhaustion and desperation. Ukraine’s military has been under severe strain defending against a much larger and stronger Russian force. Conditions are brutal, with troops often outmanned and outgunned. A former deputy head of Ukraine’s General Staff, Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, told Al Jazeera that many soldiers see a clear choice. "They think that from the legal standpoint, it’s easier to go to jail than to the front line," he said.
Draft dodging becomes a national pastime
Compounding the desertion crisis is the massive scale of draft evasion. Fedorov’s claim that two million Ukrainians are "wanted" for avoiding military service paints a picture of a society where refusal has become commonplace. Under martial law, men aged 23 to 60 eligible for service are barred from leaving the country, yet tens of thousands have fled illegally. The state has responded by expanding conscription, including all males 25 and older, but the resistance is profound.
The stories from those evading service are telling. One man, Tymofey, described to Al Jazeera being forcibly conscripted only to desert twice after receiving what he called "zero training." He claimed trainers were more focused on preventing escapes from the barbed-wire-ringed training center than on combat preparation. "They don’t care that I won’t survive the very first attack," he said. His sentiment reflects a fatalism that has spread widely.
The government’s response has been a mix of amnesty and attempted enforcement. An amnesty for first-time deserters has brought back some 30,000 troops. Meanwhile, "conscription patrols" comb public spaces for men of fighting age. Yet the system is overwhelmed. Courts are swamped with thousands of desertion cases, and the military police are understaffed. Many deserters simply melt back into society, some willing to pay bribes of several hundred dollars to avoid capture.
This internal collapse poses the gravest threat to Ukraine’s defense. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s strategy has relied on conscripting a generation to fight a war of attrition against a superior force. The result, as Fedorov’s numbers reveal, is not a rallied nation but a broken one. The policy of barring an entire gender from leaving and pressing them into service has fostered resentment and flight, not patriotic fervor.
The human cost is one of Europe’s great tragedies. With Ukrainian casualties in the hundreds of thousands according to various estimates, the war has devastated the country's young population. The leadership in Kyiv, supported by Western allies, continues to promise counter-offensives and eventual victory. Yet Ukrainian commanders have repeatedly emphasized the challenges of stabilizing defensive lines while forces face exhaustion from years of continuous combat. The gap between rhetoric and reality has never been wider.
So where does this leave a nation at war? The admission of 200,000 AWOL soldiers and 2 million draft dodgers demonstrates that after four years of sacrifice, the will to fight is evaporating. It confesses that the state’s authority is being challenged not by the enemy alone, but by its own people. For the average Ukrainian man, the choice between a front-line trench and a prison cell, or a life on the run, has become an unsettling calculus of survival. This is the true state of the union in Ukraine today, a nation being emptied out from within while its leaders promise a future its citizens no longer believe they will live to see.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.