Law enforcement officers detained the former commander of the 155th separate mechanized brigade, who did not respond to violations in his unit. This also includes cases when his soldiers left the military unit without permission. The man was reported a suspicion.
This is reported by the State Bureau of Investigation.
According to the investigation materials, the suspected commander, contrary to the law, did not inform the pre-trial investigation bodies about the facts of the AWOL, although they were reported to him not only orally, but also in written.
He also deliberately failed to perform other official duties. In particular, during 2024, he did not send a single report to the pre-trial investigation bodies regarding subordinate military personnel who committed criminal offenses.
Because of the commanderʼs actions, law enforcement officers could not start looking for the fighters to return them to service or punish them according to the law. Some subordinates periodically left their place of service without permission, then returned voluntarily, and this could be repeated several times, which made the fighters feel complete impunity.
Also, according to law enforcement, the commander did nothing to prevent mass desertion in the unit. For example, he "unreasonably" included "unmotivated" soldiers in training in France. Among them were servicemen who had been warned and prohibited in instructions and orders from the higher leadership.
In particular, this concerns 22 servicemen who were mobilized from border regions, but their place of registration was in other regions, as well as 15 soldiers who, before mobilization, were brought to administrative responsibility for wanting to illegally cross the state border.
As a result, 56 servicemen of the brigade voluntarily left the training grounds in France.
Due to the insufficient number of personnel, it became more difficult to carry out combat missions, which reduced the combat readiness and combat capability of the unit. This also undermined the prestige and authority of both the military unit and the Defense Forces as a whole, and new military threats to the national security of Ukraine appeared, the investigation says.
Law enforcement officers detained the former brigade commander of the 155th separate mechanized brigade and reported suspicion that he failed to send
What preceded this
On December 31, journalist Yuriy Butusov stated that 1,700 soldiers from the 155th separate mechanized brigade named after Anna Kyivska had voluntarily left the service before “the brigade fired the first shot.”
According to Butusov, from the very beginning it turned out that the Operative Command "West", which created the 155th brigade, had "no command personnel, no soldiers, no weapons, no resources" for this.
The 155th brigade began to be formed in March 2024. Butusov listed the number of personnel by the time they went to the front for each month and the number of fighters who went to the North-Eastern Front that month (in brackets):
- March 46 (3);
- April 123 (6);
- May 217 (31);
- June 1978 (185);
- July 3,882 (310);
- August 2,748 (217);
- September 3,253 (187);
- October 3,211 (339);
- November 5,832 (448).
Butusov also notes that in October, when the brigade went to France for training, another 50 soldiers deserted. According to him, 1,924 servicemen were sent to France, of whom only 51 had more than a year of military service experience, and 459 had less than a year. And the majority, 1,414, were soldiers who had just been enlisted, having fought for two months by that time.
Butusov stated that the State Bureau of Investigation opened a criminal case due to the incident in France.
In a comment to Ukrainska Pravda, SBI communications advisor Tetyana Sapyan said that the SBI is indeed investigating these facts and has opened criminal proceedings for desertion and abuse of power or official authority by a military official.
At the same time, the Commander of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Major General Mykhailo Drapatiy, stated that he had not observed any mass cases of soldiers of the 155th OMBR leaving combat positions.
"Instead, I observe a certain substitution of concepts, when the number of AWOLs is equated with cases of desertion," he emphasized.
A special hotline of the commander of the Land Forces operates for servicemen of the 155th brigade. Drapatiy says that he wants to understand how much the decisions of the command affect the motivation of the fighters and the real state of affairs.