Last October, Ukrainian media reported that since the beginning of 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine registered about 60,000 criminal cases on the fact of unauthorized abandonment of a unit and about 30,000 cases on the fact of desertion.

Over 1,700 soldiers from Ukraine’s newly formed 155th Mechanized Brigade, trained and outfitted with great fanfare in France, deserted before reaching the battlefront, according to Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov.

French President Emmanuel Macron proudly announced the “elite” project alongside Volodymyr Zelensky last June. The brigade was meant to have more than 5,800 troops and be equipped with Leopard tanks and French CAESAR 155 mm howitzers.

However, at least 50 members of the unit, also known as “Anne of Kiev,” went AWOL already during drills in France, Butusov wrote on social media.

When the brigade was finally packed off to the front line near Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk), it did not even have any drones.

“As a result, the brand-new Leopard 2A4 tanks and VAB armored vehicles suffered losses during the first attempts to use them,” according to Butusov, who added:

“The brigade’s servicemen became hostages of Zelensky’s PR project, which the authorities made no effort to actually implement competently.”

Between January and October of 2024, Ukrainian prosecutors opened 60,000 casesagainst soldiers forabandoning their positions– almost twice as many compared to 2022 and 2023 combined.

Remnants of the brigade have reportedly been reassigned to other units, with Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) confirming to AFP that it had opened a criminal case on the circumstances of the formation of the 155th Mechanized Brigade.

The case is being investigated under “articles on abuse of authority and desertion,” Communications Adviser to the SBI Tаtiana Sapyan said.

Destroyed military equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the zone of Russia’s special military operation. – Sputnik International, 1920, 26.12.2024