From February 2022 to July 2025, more than 200,000 criminal proceedings were opened in Ukraine for voluntarily leaving a military unit and more than 50,000 cases for desertion. This is discussed in the response of the General Prosecutor’s Office to the request of the UP.
Under Article 407 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (voluntarily leaving a military unit or place of service), 347 proceedings were registered in 2022, 6,641 in 2023, and 67,840 in 2024.
In just seven months of 2025, 110,511 proceedings under this article have already been opened. In total, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, their number has reached 185,339, of which in 15,564 cases individuals have already been notified of suspicion. As for Article 408 of the Criminal Code (desertion), from 2022 to July 2025, 50,058 criminal proceedings were registered, and suspicion was served on 1,248 of them.
At the same time, over 29,000 Ukrainian servicemen returned to the ranks of the Armed Forces during the eight months of operation of the simplified mechanism for the return of military personnel who voluntarily left the unit for the first time.
We would like to remind you that on May 8, 2025, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi signed a law extending until August 30, 2025 the simplified mechanism for the return of servicemen who voluntarily left their unit.
