Joakim Paasikivi: “One problem – greater risk of the enemy getting a breakthrough”
Here is the growing trend – more people are leaving the Ukrainian army, Kyiv Post reports.
Ex-military and security advisor Joakim Paasikivi believes that it is always a problem for a defense force in war.
– If there are large-scale desertions, which we have not seen yet, then there is a greater risk of the enemy getting a breakthrough, he says.
More and more are deserting, i.e. deviating from military service, from the Ukrainian army, reports Kyiv Post. The newspaper writes that more than 60,000 criminal cases involving desertion have been opened since 2022, of which almost half of the cases occurred this year.
Ex-military and security advisor Joakim Paasikivi says that it can be problematic to describe it as a trend as several factors can influence. But he believes that desertion is usually based on the same thing in all wars – a fear of death.
– What is most dangerous and what people are most afraid of is that you should only receive a basic education and be thrown into a unit that is not well managed. Then the chances of survival decrease. But the effect of desertion is that it is itself demoralizing to others. If there are large-scale desertions, which we have not seen yet, then there is a greater risk of the enemy breaking through, he says.
Different types of desertion
Joakim Paasikivi describes several different categories of desertion, one of which is simply not showing up.
– People try to flee the country, it is a natural fear of ending up at the front and dying. Then you stay away. A variant of that is that you bribe yourself free. Here, lots of people have been fired at the enrollment authorities because of corruption. Here there is a corruption problem and people who do not want to move in and flee the country, he says and continues:
– Then we have the old ones at the front, those who have fought for a long time. Many have been going since 2014 and many since 2022 in February. Many believe that those who fight at the front do everything and then there are those who stay away, that you can have coffee at home or go to a restaurant while others toil and die at the front. It can create an us-and-them feeling that can manifest itself in the veterans getting tired. It is also associated with psychological battle injuries.
That could be the consequences
He also mentions a third category which, among other things, deals with the relatively newly mobilized who come to the front and are not sufficiently trained. Joakim Paasikivi also mentions that when you are a volunteer, you get to choose a unit, which can have an impact.
– There is great dissatisfaction here. It was very recently that an appeal was published about a battalion commander in the Ukrainian army who had lost confidence. So you are prepared to go out and into battle and fight for your country at the front. But you are not prepared to accept bad bosses who increase the risk of you dying. Unions with a bad reputation or bad leadership always risk more desertions.
What could be the consequences if you abandon your post?
– It is then a prison sentence similar to the refusal of conscription in Sweden. In that perspective, it is no different from the rest of the West. Desertion in wartime has always been severely punished. The prison sentences mentioned in the Kyiv Post are in the context quite modest when you consider that during the First and Second World Wars people were shot for desertion.
The new laws should make it better
With the new mobilization law in place, Ukraine hopes to address the shortage of front-line personnel and reduce the number of desertions.
– It is of course always a problem for a defense force in war. It is a problem that is taken seriously. Partly that you try to fix the problems, that you make sure that there is no bad leadership, but it is difficult in an army where many have failed and seasoned leaders also fall. You also make sure that you have a legal process. Those who have deserted are tracked down and punished, says Joakim Paasikivi.