Ukraine's Insane Proxy War > 650,000 fighting-age men have fled Ukraine's draft; Ukraine kills civilians trying to cross into Russia

 

650,000 fighting-age men have fled Ukraine – Telegraph

The authorities in Kiev have struggled to deal with widespread draft evasion throughout the conflict with Russia

Young recruits undergo military training in the form of an obstacle course at the recruiting center in Kiev. © Getty Images / Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos

At least 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022, The Telegraph reported on Thursday. Others are hiding inside Ukraine or bribing officials to avoid being sent to the front, as the military faces its worst manpower crisis yet, the newspaper wrote.

According to the report, draft evasion in Ukraine is “tipping into crisis” amid Russian advances in the Donetsk region. Earlier this week, DeepState, a monitoring group with ties to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, described the situation as “chaotic” with Russian troops “accumulating forces for further advancement.” 

Kiev’s general mobilization, which mandates all able-bodied men aged 25 to 60 to serve in the armed forces, has failed to make up for ongoing battlefield losses and has led Ukrainian commanders to voice concerns over persistent manpower shortages.

Desertions are rising sharply, Ukrainian MP Anna Skorokhod said last week, adding that almost 400,000 Ukrainian servicemen have abandoned their units without authorization, and many – including volunteers – have no plans to return due to abysmal treatment from superiors.

Ukraine is “visibly losing the war,” The Telegraph wrote, citing military analyst Konrad Muzyka, who pointed to infantry shortages and the declining effectiveness of its drone operations.

Read more

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Many Ukrainians are avoiding conscription out of fear, the newspaper added. As troop numbers dwindle, even support personnel such as mechanics and radar operators are being reassigned to infantry roles, according to one draft evader in hiding, who said every new recruit is sent directly to the front line.

Widespread videos on social media show Ukrainian draft officers employing forceful and sometimes violent tactics – chasing men, dragging them into unmarked vans, and assaulting both those targeted and nearby civilians. This has led to growing public outrage over what is now widely known as “busification.” 

In response, many potential recruits have attempted to escape the country by crossing treacherous terrain or rivers, often with fatal consequences. Ukrainian border guards have intercepted thousands of such attempts and, in some cases, have used firearms against fleeing individuals.

Ukraine kills civilians trying to cross into Russia – senior diplomat

The documented murders are part of Kiev’s wider push to wipe out the population in the border Donetsk region, Rodion Miroshnik has said

Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik. ©  Sputnik/Vitaly Belousov

Ukrainian troops have over the course of the conflict killed hundreds of civilians attempting to cross the frontline into Russia, senior diplomat Rodion Miroshnik told the news agency TASS on Friday. 

Miroshnik, who serves as the Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large for the Kiev regime’s war crimes, said the cases had been documented through testimony and video evidence.

“There are hundreds of cases. There are instances where people were shot while trying to cross the [front] line, bombarded with drones, attacked,” the diplomat said. 

Miroshnik went on to claim that Kiev’s forces deliberately murder civilians in the new Russian region of Donetsk.

READ MORE: Polish president-elect asks Zelensky to exhume victims of Ukrainian Nazis

“There were cases where Ukrainian forces went through the basements of houses and threw grenades at people ‘as a preventive measure,’ he said. Such tactics, seen in the towns of Avdeevka, Selidovo, and Dzerzhinsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) left areas “completely cleared” of civilians, he added. The same happened in Chasov Yar, a key Ukrainian stronghold liberated by Russian forces two weeks ago.

According to the diplomat, evidence suggests that Kiev’s forces kill those whom Ukraine no longer sees as its own citizens, but rather as “separatists” waiting to be liberated by Russia.

In June, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Kiev of deliberately exterminating civilians in Donbass, including mass killings of the elderly and drone strikes on residential buildings.

Russia will not overlook any crimes committed against the civilian population in violation of international humanitarian law, Miroshnik stressed.

The diplomat argued that under international conventions Ukraine is obligated to investigate alleged war crimes and hold perpetrators accountable but claimed that Kiev is unlikely to do so and that its Western backers will not apply pressure.

Ukraine deliberately exterminating civilians in Donbass – Moscow

Miroshnik added that Russia will push for the extradition of Ukrainian war criminals, noting that around 108,000 criminal cases have already been opened and roughly 500 individuals have been convicted, including some in absentia.

Military Madness > Ukrainian conscript soldiers deserting; German couple murder Ukrainian mom and grandma for new-born girl; UK Special Forces murdered civilians in Afghanistan

 

Ukrainian soldiers go AWOL in France – AFP

Dozens of recruits have reportedly deserted the elite

‘Anne of Kiev’ brigade

Ukrainian soldiers of the Anne of Kiev Brigade during training in France in 2023. ©  French Army

Dozens of Ukrainian soldiers have deserted from an elite brigade while training in France, AFP reported on Monday, citing a French army official. 

The 155th Mechanized Brigade was meant to be a flagship Ukrainian unit, trained and equipped by France. Named ‘Anne of Kiev’ after the daughter of a medieval prince, Yaroslav the Wise, who married French King Henry I, the unit was personally inspected by French President Emmanuel Macron in northeast France in October.

Around 2,300 of the soldiers have been trained in France, and 2,200 more in Ukraine.

Without disclosing the number of deserters, the official who spoke to AFP claimed they “remain very marginal given the volume of people who have undergone training.” 

“They were in French barracks, they had the right to go out,” the official said, adding that the soldiers were subjected to a disciplinary regime “imposed by the Ukrainian command.” The official stressed that France had no authority to arrest the deserters. 

“Yes, there are problems, we are aware of them,” Mikahil Drapaty, the recently appointed commander of Ukraine’s Land Forces, told AFP news agency. 

According to AFP, most of the soldiers arriving in France were conscripts with no combat experience and were accompanied by 300 Ukrainian supervisors. 

Popular Ukrainian journalist Yury Butusov reported earlier this month that “dozens” of soldiers had deserted the brigade in France, and 1,700 more went AWOL while serving in Ukraine.

According to Butusov, the brigade’s senior commanders have “either been fired or are in the process of being fired.” 

Commenting on Butusov’s report, Drapaty told AFP that “a number of the facts that were presented did take place,” but “perhaps not on the scale and scope that was presented.” 

The brigade admitted having problems with personnel, and released an appeal on social media for its lost recruits to report back to base. “We understand that the reasons which have forced you to go AWOL may have been different,” the unit said in a statement on Facebook on Monday. “Return to the team. We are waiting for you.”

Tatyana Sapyan, spokeswoman for Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation, told Interfax-Ukraine that the authorities are investigating the brigade for desertion and abuse of power. 

Last week, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced that the MOD will conduct a “comprehensive analysis” of the Land Forces Command and implement “reforms in management and personnel policies.”

The Ukrainian Army has been struggling with personnel shortages and low morale on the front line, with soldiers, journalists and military bloggers increasingly criticizing the government.

Ukraine has already lost most of a generation of young men, and now appears to be working on the next generation. NATO must be so proud!

Since February 24, 2022, approximately 40 million border crossings from Ukraine to other countries were recorded as of December 2024. Most of the refugees fled to Poland. More than 6.2 million refugees from Ukraine were recorded in Europe as of December 16, 2024.

German couple confess to killing Ukrainian migrants

for baby

The husband and wife said that they killed the women and took the child because they “really wanted to have a daughter”

FILE PHOTO: German police on patrol in Kehl, Germany, September 16, 2024 ©  Getty Images / Thomas Niedermueller

A German couple have confessed to murdering two female Ukrainian migrants and stealing the younger victim’s baby. A court heard how the killers posed as volunteers who could help the Ukrainians with translation, in a ploy to abduct the newborn infant.

The two defendants, identified as 43-year-old ‘Marco’ and his 45-year-old wife ‘Ina’, appeared in court in the southern city of Mannheim on Tuesday, where they admitted to killing a 27-year-old Ukrainian and her 51-year-old mother last March.

In an earlier hearing, prosecutors described how the victims were living in accommodation for Ukrainian asylum seekers in the town of Wiesloch when they met the couple, who had offered their services on a Telegram group, Deutsche Welle reported.

When the 27-year-old gave birth to a baby in February, they allegedly began hatching a plan to kill her and take the infant.

Read more

 Ukrainians should return from Germany and make weapons – Zelensky aide

The couple took the two Ukrainian women to a restaurant in early March and slipped sedatives into their drinks, prosecutors said. They allegedly drove the older woman to a lake where the man beat her to death, then took the younger woman to a dam where she was killed in the same manner, before the man set her body on fire.

The young woman’s remains were found within hours, while police divers discovered the older woman’s body several weeks later. The baby was taken from the couple unharmed and the two suspects were taken into custody.

Speaking in court on Tuesday via his lawyers, the man said that he and his wife already have four children and were willing to kill to have another baby of their own, after enduring multiple miscarriages and failed fertility treatments.

”I regret everything I have done,” the man said in his statement. “We really wanted to have a daughter together, that was my wife’s most fervent wish.”

“I committed these crimes with my husband,” the woman said in her statement. “I made a big mistake that weighs heavily on me. Little Mia is without a mother and my children no longer have a mother either,” she said, referring to the infant by name.

The couple are accused of two counts of joint murder and one count of child abduction. Mannheim District Court has scheduled nine days of hearings until the end of February. The child now lives with her aunt in Ukraine.

UK special forces had ‘golden pass’

to get away with murder – officer

Military brass had no interest in investigating alleged war crimes by the SAS, an inquiry has heard

A British commando fires at Taliban positions in Helmand province, Afghanistan, March 18, 2007 ©  Getty Images / John Moore

British SAS operatives were given a “golden pass allowing them to get away with murder” in Afghanistan, a former UK Special Forces officer has told a government inquest. Other witnesses described routine executions of unarmed civilians by British forces.

The officer’s statement was given behind closed doors to the UK’s Independent Inquiry Relating to Afghanistan earlier this year (more likely last year), and included in a trove of documents published by the inquiry on Tuesday.

The former officer raised concerns about the killing of unarmed civilians in 2011, claiming that the SAS was covering these crimes up. The officer said that higher-ups within UK Special Forces – which comprises the Special Air Service (SAS), the Special Boat Service (SBS), and four other clandestine branches of the British military – had no interest in investigating the killings, and that SAS operatives had essentially been handed a “golden pass allowing them to get away with murder.”

The Afghanistan Inquiry is probing night raids carried out by British special forces between 2010 and 2013, when the alleged killings took place.

Read more

 Top UK general withheld evidence of SAS executions – BBC

A junior officer told the inquest that “all fighting age males” were killed in these raids, regardless of whether they were armed or not. SAS personnel sometimes carried weapons to drop beside dead bodies after the killings in order to make them appear as combatants.

Prisoners were sometimes executed after they had been restrained, the witness recounted. “In one case, it was mentioned a pillow was put over the head of an individual before being killed with a pistol,” the document noted.

The inquiry is investigating the killings of at least 80 prisoners.

”I suppose what shocked me most wasn’t the execution of potential members of the Taliban, which was of course wrong and illegal, but it was more the age and the methods and, you know, the details of things like pillows,” the officer said, noting that some of the victims were “100%” aged 16 or younger.

The officer said that he was afraid for his own safety after testifying.

”Basically, there appears to be a culture there of ‘shut up, don't question’,” another officer told the inquiry.

READ MORE: British commandos investigated over war crimes in Syria – media

Claims of war crimes committed by British special forces in Afghanistan have surfaced before, with BBC Panorama, the Sunday Times, and other outlets claiming that civilians were routinely killed on night raids. In one case, the American military reportedly had video footage of one massacre, but mysteriously lost the footage when pressed by a British court.

Mysterious, eh?

Late last year, the BBC reported that one of the UK’s most senior generals had withheld from the latest inquiry evidence of soldiers executing handcuffed detainees in Afghanistan.