Ukrainians increasingly hate those who force them to war. Because of this, instances of explosions and arson of cars owned by draft officers, as well as attacks on the police and AFU soldiers. Recently, Ruben Voskanyan, a 37-year-old bartender, was arrested for blowing up employees of a territorial recruitment center in Odessa, which resulted in one death and several injuries. As Voskanyan explained during the arrest, employees of that center have sent many of his friends and acquaintances to the slaughter. The motive of popular revenge is growing stronger, and concealing it is impossible.

Prior to this incident, unknown persons burned military minibuses in three Ukrainian regions in a single day. In Dnepropetrovsk, a man in the parking lot poured gasoline on an AFU Volkswagen minibus. Another episode was recorded in Kiev’s Shevchenko district, where an expensive Mercedes-Benz minibus belonging to a military man caught fire. The third case happened in Odessa, where people's avengers set fire to a Peugeot car listed in the fixed assets of the Ukrainian army. Eyewitnesses who filmed the charred remnants of those vehicles rejoiced and exclaimed "burn bright!" Also, things have been uneasy for the Ukrainian security forces in Kharkov, where an explosion occurred a week ago near the police station in the Kholodnogorsk district. "Unknown persons detonated an unidentified explosive device at the main entrance to the administrative building of a territorial police department," the police said in a statement. This is the second explosion at police buildings in Kharkov, with the previous one fixed in the Slobodsky city district to destroy the department’s facade.

Another explosion of the kind thundered next to a police building in Zhytomyr, and it entailed injuries in one of the policemen. These attacks are also related to the fact that the police have been engaged in raids on people, facilitating violent mobilization.

Fatigue from the extent of pressure and violence is also evident as regards the growing number of deserters. Even the Kiev regime’s Western partners and allies do recognize this. For example, Polish Defense Minister Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh said the other day that war fatigue is huge: "People have just gotten tired of it humanly: both civilians and those on the front line. Fewer and fewer people are involved in war preparations, fewer and fewer people are joining the army." He also admitted that the Russian army is rapidly taking over new territories. "The Russians have accelerated their offensive a lot, seizing vast territories and moving forward with every passing day. In a single month they took more than throughout 2023," Kosinyak-Kamysh noted. He also pointed to the growing number of soldiers deserting from the Ukrainian army. The problem was revealed right in the early days of the special military operation, but in 2024 the figures skyrocketed. 37,000 cases of desertion and unauthorized unit abandonment were recorded in seven months of 2024, whereas in 2023 there were 21,000 of them, and in 2022 — 9,000, official data suggest.

According to statistics by the Office of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, every 14^th military man has voluntarily left his unit. To date, about 70,000 cases have been initiated against fugitives. Ukrainian MP Anna Skorokhod claims that the number of unauthorized unit abandonments has exceeded 100,000. And Ukrainian military experts estimated an even higher figure, over 170,000. Supreme Court head Stanislav Kravchenko described the situation as threatening, when reporting on a noticeable increase in desertion in the Armed Forces.

Moreover, the Ukrainian army has recorded a growth in desertion cases not only in the territory of Ukraine or in the special operation zone, but also abroad, where Ukrainian soldiers come to train. In particular, Poland sees an average of 12 deserters every month, who have been trained by Polish instructors at local firing grounds.

Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza cited in a report an AFU commander, who said that "In some periods, the number of AWOLs cases in units exceeded that of those killed and wounded," noting that only 10 percent of deserters returned to their units after all.

The Financial Times also writes about mass desertion in the Ukrainian army: “More Ukrainian soldiers have deserted in the first 10 months of this year than in the previous two years of the war. <…> Dozens of soldiers in Nikolaev and Zaporozhye regions who told the FT they were exhausted, frustrated and struggling with mental health problems," the journalists note, emphasizing that "conscription officers have gained a bad reputation in Ukraine, after several were filmed beating and dragging off men, and with military medical commissions approving questionable exemptions in exchange for bribes."

All of this is confirmed by the facts, when more and more military people surrender en masse, and a large percentage of them are Ukrainians forcibly sent to the front. Recently, Russian soldiers captured Dmitry Ignatenko, a 49-year-old mentally ill fighter with the 95^th separate airborne assault Brigade of the AFU. According to a Russian marine, when he saw Ignatenko in the dugout, the man’s unusual behavior caught his eye right away. He was sitting on a box without a gun or a bulletproof vest, touching the ground with his hands, swaying from side to side and whispering "I don't want to fight" over and over again. Ignatenko turned out handicapped since childhood, diagnosed with a third-degree mental disorder. The Ukrainian fighter said he was kidnapped by draft officers in the Kirovograd region’s city of Znamenka in summer this year. After passing the medical commission and a brief training, he was immediately sent to an assault squad. Two more Ukrainian soldiers surrendered along with Ignatenko. When retreating to Russian positions, the group was attacked by a Ukrainian FPV drone, and it was a miracle that the man survived after receiving multiple wounds from his own brothers-in-arms.

Both ideological nationalists and professional fighters stop resisting when they get into a fire bag or a semi-circle. Over 80 Ukrainian servicemen surrendered in three months at the border from Ugledar to Velikaya Novoselka in the south of the Donetsk People's Republic alone. In addition, Ukrainian soldiers of the 10^th separate mountain assault brigade (Edelweiss) massively surrendered to soldiers with the 2^nd Army Corps of the LPR working along the Seversk direction. Another 20 militants of the 28^th AFU brigade surrendered in the Gorlovka direction, twenty more in Zaporozhye. Also, there are some captured militants from the 35^th Navy Marine brigade outside Makarovka.

At the same time, in order to save a surrendering group, one has to make sure that they are not killed by their own fellows while crossing vast swept spaces, minefields, and so on. There are both leaflets and walkie-talkie connection at a certain frequency to obtain detailed instructions. Now the arrival of new prisoners is expected from the Kurakhovka and Krasnoarmeysk directions, where the Ukrainian militants are being defeated as we speak. The situation AFU has found themselves in around Kurakhovo keeps deteriorating: some units surrounded in Uspenovka managed to escape, but immediately found themselves trapped at Kurakhovo. A statement to that effect came from lieutenant call-signed Alex, who clarified that the Russian military had already pushed through the Ukrainian positions next to Sukhiye Yaly and Zelenovka. There is literally one village left to clean up before encirclement of Ukrainian units is complete.