🇺🇦 Ukraine lawmaker estimates 500,000 soldiers absent without leave

About 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have fled their positions on the frontline and another 1mn men are in hiding to avoid the compulsory draft, lawmaker Oleksandr Fedienko told Telegraf on October 15.

Fedienko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada's national security committee who chairs its cyberspace security subcommittee, gave both numbers as estimates, "but we do not know the exact figures," he said.

The 500,000 refers to AWOL cases of unauthorised absence from a unit, which Ukraine's military and courts call SZCh, the abbreviation for samovilne zalyshennia chastyny. He raised the figures to argue for legislation making life harder for men who stay off the military register, including restrictions on their access to banking and municipal services.

It is two and a half times the last count the government itself gave. The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is facing a catastrophic manpower shortage as it continues to lose between 100-300 men a day, according to various estimates, which is still five to ten-times less than Russia. However, the authorities are scrapping the bottom of the barrel as the pool of military aged potential conscripts is almost depleted, whereas Russia has yet to fully tap its population of 150mn people with a general mobilisation.

Prime Minister Serhiy Koretskyi has ordered an audit and asked  the Security Service of Ukraine and military intelligence to establish how many servicemen are absent and how many men are outside the military register altogether, Interfax-Ukraine reported on October 20.

Iuliia Mendel, a Ukrainian journalist who was President Vladimir Zelensky's press secretary from 2019 to 2021 and  now a vocal critic of his government argued that service is open-ended, with no fixed term and no reliable rotation. For many Ukrainian men that means conscription is a death-sentance with the realistic options narrowing to death, permanent injury or leaving. Zelensky placed her under Ukrainian sanctions by decree in September, in what was widely seen as a political move.

Then defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov gave parliament the last official pair of numbers in January: 200,000 absent and 2mn men wanted for evading mobilisation. "I don't want to be a populist - I want to be a realist," he told lawmakers. Fedienko's absentee figure is two and a half times that, and his evasion figure half of it.

Nine months on, the official pair of numbers has not moved. AP reported on October 8 that Ukrainian officials were still citing about 2mn men evading service and roughly 200,000 absent or deserted, with some front-line units at half strength.

🔗 https://www.intellinews.com/ukraine-lawmaker-estimates-500-000-soldiers-absent-without-leave-477664/

🇾🇪⚔️🇸🇦 An Ansarallah/Houthi drone targeted the Shaybah oil field on the KSA-Emirati border

The KSA said the drone was "intercepted" but that "falling debris" killed two foreign workers and injured two more.

Reuters published a thorough investigation last week detailing how interception rates published by GCC countries were fabricated with attacks written off as "damaged by falling debris" while in reality they destroyed by direct hits from Iranian missiles and drones.

@CIG_telegram

🇸🇦🇵🇱🇺🇦 A KSA Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft followed a weird pattern before landing at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, the main logistics hub of the Ukrainian Army

This flight follows another strange flight by a Ukrainian Air Force Ilyushin 76MD Heavy Transport aircraft to the Sharorah Airport near the KSA-Yemeni border, last week, likely carrying Ukrainian drones and perhaps even personnel.

🔗 MenchOSINT

🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 — A strike, presumably American, was conducted against a missile launcher of unknown type in Sirik, Iran.

🇺🇸⛽️ The U.S. is tapping into the Emergency Reserve in a last ditch attempt to lower fuel prices for consumers

The U.S. plans to loan 1/3 of the reserve or 315k barrels worth of heating oil, similar in chemical structure to diesel, to replace diesel that is used for heating.

The one and only time the U.S. used the Emergency Reserve was back in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy. The emergency stockpile is held at sites ​in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine.

The difference today being obviously that the U.S. East Coast was not hit by a hurricane. The 315k barrels of heating oil the Trump Admin plans to release will barely leave a dent as it is estimated that just the East Coast alone consumes 1 million barrels/day.

Soaring heating oil costs have emerged as a key issue ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, including in several tight Senate races, as Trump's fellow Republicans are trying to maintain control of the two ​chambers of Congress.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-aims-loan-about-third-heating-oil-reserve-bid-tame-prices-2026-10-21/

🇮🇷⚔️🇮🇱🇺🇸 An Iranian senior security official in Tehran told Fars that Iran has instructed its various operational units that, should another round of large-scale war occur, including a wave of assassinations targeting officials and the killing of civilians, Iran will consider political targets associated with the US and other participants in the war, as well as their infrastructure, legitimate targets.

A senior security official in Tehran stated: Iran assumes that the U.S. and Israel will attack, and considers U.S. diplomatic gestures to be lacking credibility. This perception has intensified, especially after Rubio's speech in Athens, which gave a historical and cultural justification to the U.S.'s conflict with Iran.

Iranian leaders and political and intellectual elites have reached an unprecedented consensus that U.S. policy in the Middle East is dictated by Tel Aviv, and that Israel will not allow the U.S. to pursue any diplomatic solution, because for Trump, Israel comes first.

Iran already sees itself at war with the U.S., and considers the U.S.'s economic, naval, and air restrictions to be a continuation of military aggression that began on March 1st. Consequently, there is significant pressure from various segments of the population for decisive action to break the siege, based on the principle of self-defense.

🔗 https://t.me/farsna/469911