Adapted from Censor.net (Ukraine), Oct 5, 2015
The military prosecutor’s office of Ukraine has opened 16,000 criminal proceedings against army defectors, but police are able to find less than a thousand of them.
The chief military prosecutor of Ukraine, Anatolii Matios, spoke in an interview to 112 Ukraine TV channel. Censor.net obtained its information from Gordon.net.
“We have investigated 16,000 criminal proceedings against soldiers who deserted the ATO area [civil war zone of eastern Ukraine]. A significant part of them kept their weapons.
“They were put on wanted lists. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has found no more than a thousand of them during the past year,” Matios said.
“Where did they go? They did not fly away but returned home. So, the district police officer with his salary of 2,000 hryvnia (about $90) did not fulfill his responsibilities and the entire system did not function.”
According to the chief military prosecutor, the absence of inevitability of punishment in the country corrupts the law enforcement agencies.
Also according to Gordon.net, Ukrainian officials say there were 10,000 military deserters in 2014 and the number fell to 100 in 2015. By June 2015, the military service’s enforcement service had convicted about 400 soldiers for desertion. Punishment ranged from fines and suspended sentences to three soldiers who were sentenced to seven years in prison.”
The claim of 100 military deserters in 2015 appears to fly in the face of the fact that some of the most intense fighting of Kyiv’s civil war in eastern Ukraine took place in January and February 2015, just prior to the signing of the Minsk-2 ceasefire agreement on Feb 12, 2015.
