the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 15, 2025
This article is translated from the September 12 issue #2980 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Ukrainians rallied in several major cities starting September 5 against proposed legislation that brings back harsh sentences for soldiers accused of abandoning their posts or refusing to obey orders. Depending on their case, soldiers may face five or ten years in prison.
Protesters including veterans denounced the “corrupt people at large” who are protected by the government. Adult children of cabinet ministers, senior officials, and legislators who are supposed to enforce the law have gone into hiding abroad to avoid being mobilized, with its risk of being killed in action.
Ukrainians are far from the image of a people united in their will to fight that the regime’s propaganda disseminates. Many soldiers, including enlisted personnel, have left their units without authorization. There have been 202,997 recorded cases since 2022, including 50,058 confirmed desertions. As this phenomenon grew, the government decided last August to not punish soldiers for their first abandonment of their post or unit, for a period of one year. In the eyes of the General Staff, this was intended to prevent their “absence” from becoming a definitive desertion. But today, as the Ukrainian army struggles increasingly to make up for its losses, it’s time to strengthen discipline more than to “preserve human resources.” Generals and government officials need cannon fodder.
In Russia, the Ministry of Defense and the FSB domestic spy agency issued instructions in February 2023 to no longer make data on desertions public. However, cross-checks of military tribunal records show at least 18,341 convictions handed down for desertion or for abandoning a post. Russian media outlet in exile The Insider compiled a list of reports published by some 100 garrison courts which show that only one in three cases goes to trial. The total number of desertions over three and a half years might reach 60,000, or nearly 10% of the troops Russia has deployed in Ukraine.
More worrisome for the Russian authorities, this trend continues to grow. Between the start of the war and 2024, the number of convictions for desertion increased tenfold! This certainly doesn’t match the image of a “Russia forming a united and supportive popular front” in the face of war that President Vladimir Putin touted in July. But he’d probably like to believe it anyway....