Since beginning of 2022, almost 60 thousand criminal proceedings on AWOL have been registered - Prosecutor General’s Office. INFOGRAPHICS
The Prosecutor's Office has registered almost 60,000 criminal offenses for unauthorized abandonment of a unit (AWOL) and about 30,000 for desertion since January 2022.
According to Censor.NET, such statistics were provided by the Prosecutor General's Office at the request of UP.
As noted, from the beginning of 2022 to September 2024, 59,606 criminal proceedings on the fact of AWOL (Article 407 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) were registered. 2,592 of these proceedings were closed.
At the same time, during the same period, 29,521 offenses on the fact of desertion (Article 408 of the Criminal Code) were registered, of which 414 were closed.
The Prosecutor General's Office reported that in January-September 2024, there were three times as many cases of AWOL and almost four times as many desertions as in the same period last year."
However, the number of court sentences for AWOL and desertion is ten times less than the number of registered criminal offenses, "UP" writes.
According to the press center of the judiciary:
- In 2022, 1,505 sentences were imposed for AWOL, in 2023 - 2,165, and in January-September 2024 - 766.
- In 2022, 179 sentences were imposed for desertion, in 2023 - 195, and in January-September 2024 - 177.
A UP source from the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement admits off the record that the SBI is not able to investigate such a large number of cases.
"As a result, we come to the worst thing in the legal system - selective justice. One person is caught, another is not, and the third is caught and released because he paid a bribe," the interviewee added.
Public AWOL of soldier Serhiy Hnezdilov of the 56th SMIB
As a reminder, on September 21, 2024, Hnezdilov wrote on Facebook that he had left the unit without permission to draw attention to the need to establish terms of service for mobilized soldiers.
"The absence of clear terms of service contributes to "black demobilization": marrying pensioners with disabilities was once a meme, but now it is a very common phenomenon, divorcing wives to arrange sole custody of a child, divorcing their own parents to arrange care for a mother or father, going to the AWOL. There is much to learn from history, but unfortunately, we do not learn the lessons of history.
The government is still incapable of a serious dialog with society and intolerant of the failure to fulfill civic duty by a wide range of citizens. Instead of the doctrine that "fighting is the duty of every citizen," the government proposes to appoint those who were caught in the streets as defenders for an indefinite period of time," he explained.
The 56th Separate Motorised Infantry Brigade ordered an internal investigation.
Subsequently, Serhii Hnezdilov, a soldier of the 56th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, who publicly reported on AWOL, was served with a suspicion of desertion.
On October 11, Kyiv's Pechersk District Court imposed a pre-trial restraint on Serhiy Hnezdilov, a soldier with the 56th Brigade, in the form of two months in custody. The soldier is suspected of desertion.
Hnezdilov took part in battles in the Donetsk region, including Pisky and Bakhmut. He is also the founder of the cultural festival "VydelkaFest" in his hometown of Vylkove in the Odesa region and hosts the Hromadske podcast "++ Podcast", where he talks to the military and raises the issue of militarisation of society.
Censor.NET previously published an interview with Hnezdilov.
