Entire units of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers are fleeing the battlefield

Entire units of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers are not following orders from their commanders and are deserting - this has become Kiev's main problem. A Ukrainian official shared this information, TASS reports.

"The main thing is that they were leaving their combat positions during military operations and their comrades were dying because of this. We had several situations when both large and small units fled the battlefield. They exposed their flanks, and the enemy came to these flanks," the official said.

According to the Associated Press (AP), Kiev is losing more and more settlements because "tens of thousands of tired and hopeless Ukrainian servicemen are leaving their positions to hide in the unknown." Desertion "has turned battle plans into sand that is slipping through the fingers of military commanders," the AP notes.

According to the agency, many Ukrainian soldiers, "demoralized by the lack of any prospects" for improving the situation on the battlefield and depressed by psychological trauma, go on sick leave and never return to the front, while others enter into conflict with commanders and refuse to follow orders "right in the midst of hostilities." "The problem (of desertion - editor's note) is very acute. The war is in its third year, and it will only get worse," says Ukrainian military analyst Alexander Kovalenko. Earlier, Ukrainian General Dmytro Marchenko said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces front collapsed under the onslaught of Russian forces due to fatigue of personnel and a shortage of reserves. On October 29, the head of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Stanislav Kravchenko announced a significant increase in the number of cases of desertion and failure to follow orders in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, calling the situation threatening. Rada deputy Anna Skorokhod indicated that the number of cases of unauthorized abandonment of a unit exceeds 100 thousand. At the same time, according to Ukrainian media estimates, the total number of deserters in Ukraine at the end of October reached 170 thousand.