80% of cases of CWS are escape from training centers – Kostenko
21 December 2025 10:14
Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence and MP, said that currently 80% of cases of unauthorized abandonment of units by military personnel occur when they are in training centers.
He said this in an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
Kostenko noted that most of those who went to the NWC want to return to rear positions. According to the MP, it is not worth flirting with such military personnel.
“We need to develop clear rules. We definitely shouldn’t idealize the situation – that we should create conditions for a person to return. And if they come back just to take a job and get paid, then why return them at all? Stop flirting with everyone. The people who left betrayed those who are fighting. 80% of the escapees are from training centers, and I believe that this should be punished,” he said.
Kostenko noted that the government should make decisions solely to save the country, not “for its good name.”
“It will automatically and historically fall into place. The popular decisions will probably end in 2022, in January, when we talked about how we will grill kebabs,” said the secretary of the parliamentary committee on national security.
He explained that among the “unpopular decisions” made by the President and the government should be, among other things, the issues of mobilization and personnel supply.
“Zelensky knows all these decisions, the government knows all these decisions. They relate to many things. Including negotiations, negotiators and the negotiation background. Of course, this is also a matter of mobilization and provision of personnel…” Kostenko added.
In September 2025, Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal said in an interview with Sky News that the level of mobilization in Ukraine was sufficient to restore personnel and even create a small reserve.
For his part, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 30,000 people are mobilized into the Armed Forces every month. He noted that sometimes the military points out the need to recruit more people. However, according to the head of state, it is necessary to “keep a balance.”
Between January 2022 and September 2025, law enforcement officers opened nearly 290,000 criminal cases for AWOL and desertion.
In early August, SBI Director Oleksii Sukhachov said that thanks to a simplified mechanism for returning to service for those who left the military unit for the first time, more than 29,000 servicemen returned to service from November 29, 2024, to August 2025.
