Starting in November, articles by Yuriy Butusov, founder of the news website Censor.net, revealed gross mismanagement: 1,700 men, about a third of the brigade, had gone AWOL (some back to their old units), and 50 deserted in France. France had delivered the Caesar howitzers, armoured vehicles and anti-tank missiles it promised, but Ukraine failed to provide crucial drones and electronic-warfare capacity. On its return the brigade was splintered: units and kit were hived off to other brigades, trained specialists were reassigned to infantry platoons, and desertions spiked as inexperienced units were sent to forward positions and took heavy losses.

Mr Butusov notes that all seven new brigades Ukraine raised in 2024 suffered similar problems when first deployed. But the 155th’s desertions have spotlighted Ukraine’s struggling mobilisation process, its unresponsive high command and the increasing dismay of its allies, who underwrite the war effort but have no say in strategy. The 155th is said to have cost around €900m ($930m). “For better or worse, Ukraine makes all the decisions,” says Jeffrey Edmonds, a former Pentagon official now at the Centre for a New American Security, a think-tank in Washington.

“Nick” (his military call sign), a battalion commander in the 155th, said he trained three tranches of recruits last year, only to see them sent to other brigades. When the 155th went to France it instead brought raw recruits. Only a dozen of his unit’s soldiers had combat experience before going to France. The brigade’s return was jumbled; some officers stayed for additional training. Nick and his soldiers were immediately sent to areas of heavy fighting. At one point he personally led ten men to retake a position, to demonstrate tactics to soldiers with no experience.

Mr Zelensky is now said to be overseeing an investigation into “abuses of power”, to soothe French irritation. General Mykhailo Drapatyi, appointed commander of Ukraine’s ground forces in November, stressed that the French side “fully fulfilled its obligations to Ukraine”. He promised to bolster the brigade’s officer corps and encouraged soldiers to contact him directly.

But for Mr Butusov the problems show failures in Ukraine’s high command. A new mobilisation law enacted last spring has not stopped people being summarily drafted on the street; desertions rose last year. Some generals close their ears to bad news: an internal report rating the brigade “unsatisfactory” was revised to “satisfactory” before it was deployed. Others blame subordinates. After the scandal broke, the brigade’s well-regarded chief was fired.

Many argue the army should be reinforcing existing brigades rather than forming new ones. Commanders are loth to part with their best soldiers, so new brigades struggle to attract veterans. America has pledged to create two new brigades and the Germans one, but with both governments in transition timetables have grown vague. After meeting Mr Macron in December, Mr Zelensky announced France would create a second brigade; France says this is still “under discussion”. The scandal has since reportedly led Mr Zelensky to order a temporary halt to new brigades.

Nick talked to The Economist at midnight via a video call from his bunker three kilometres from the front line. A screen behind him showed night-vision surveillance of the battlefield and the 155th’s banner, with its scorpion emblem. The brigade is training on the job. There are still desertions, but over the past two weeks Nick has sensed the start of a “sense of brotherhood”. The day, he sighed, had been much like the last 40. He has not seen his wife for five months. “We are holding on.”

• Ukraine’s investigators are probing the 155th Mechanized Brigade, a unit partially trained by France.
• Nicknamed “Anne of Kyiv,” the highly publicized brigade was an effort by France to bolster Ukraine’s defenses.
• But it’s come under scrutiny after a Ukrainian reporter said 1,700 of its troops had deserted.

Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation is probing a brigade specially trained to use French weapons after reports that hundreds of soldiers deserted the unit.

Tetyana Sapian, a spokesperson for the investigative agency, told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday that authorities had launched a criminal investigation into abuse of power and desertion at the 155th Mechanized Brigade.

“The investigation is ongoing. It is too early to talk about any preliminary results,” she said.

The infantry brigade, named “Anne of Kyiv” after an 11th-century Kyiv princess who became a queen of France, has about 5,800 soldiers. Around 2,000 of them underwent months of training in France in 2024.

There, they enjoyed a relatively high profile; French President Emmanuel Macron personally met several of 155th’s battalions during a public visit to a French base in October.

Paris armed the brigade with its own weaponry, including 18 AMX 10 armored vehicles, 18 truck-mounted Caesar howitzers, and 128 armored troop carriers. The unit also fields some of Germany’s prized Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks.

By November, the 155th was set to hit the front lines, with French officials saying these Ukrainian troops were now equipped to fight with Western battlefield training.

1,700 desertions, war reporter says

But a report last week by Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov said the brigade has been buckling from desertion and leadership issues, even before it was deployed to Pokrovsk.

“Before the brigade fired the first shot, 1,700 servicemen left it voluntarily,” wrote Butusov.

He did not provide evidence for his claim, but published a tally of the unit’s strength over time that said hundreds of men deserted monthly from March to November, forcing the 155th to keep replenishing personnel.

A key factor in the desertion rate, Butusov wrote, was that many in the unit had been forcibly recruited off Ukraine’s streets. About 50 men also went AWOL while the unit was training in France, Butusov added.

Uncertainty also hangs over the 155th’s leadership. Days into its deployment on the front line, the brigade’s commander, Col. Dmytro Ryumshin, abruptly announced that he would step down. Ryumshin, a seasoned officer with experience commanding two other brigades, thanked his troops in a Facebook post, saying that the 155th had undergone a “tough but significant journey.”

He was replaced by Col. Maksimov Taras Viktorovych, a former commander of the 14th Mechanized Brigade.

Troops divvied up for other units

The 155th has also been moving soldiers to other units in need of replenishment, and according to Butusov, it’s dealt with at least seven significant personnel changes since March.

Drone-jamming specialists in the 155th, for example, had to fill infantry roles amid a manpower shortage, he wrote.

Mariana Bezuhla, a controversial Ukrainian member of parliament known for criticizing military leadership, said in early December that the 155th was being “torn to pieces, seconded to others.”

“Even the fact that the French tried to make the brigade specialized did not save it from the stupid military decisions of our generals and tore the unit apart,” she said.

Butusov’s report has since drawn outcry among Ukrainian figures, such as Lt. Col. Bohdan Krotevych, who serves as chief of staff in the Azov Brigade.

“Perhaps it’s sheer idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with new technology while existing ones are undermanned,” he wrote on X.

Serhii Sternenko, a well-known Ukrainian lawyer who provides crowdfunded drones to military units, said his organization was assisting the 155th because the brigade lacked officially provided drones and jammers.

“Why create a new brigade when existing brigades are critically understaffed, only to later divide it and transfer personnel to the old brigades? What’s the point?” he wrote on Tuesday on his Telegram channel.

The brigade’s fate threatens to mar the legacy of Macron’s efforts to position France as a staunch ally of Ukraine. Paris has pledged some $3 billion in military aid to Kyiv, and Macron has been one of the most vocal European leaders pushing for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.

He’s also floated the idea of sending French troops to Ukraine if Russia were to score a massive breakthrough.

The French and Ukrainian Defense Ministries did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

When contacted by BI, the 155th Mechanized Brigade’s communications service said: “Until the official investigation is completed, the brigade commander will not provide any comments.”

Overall, the “Anne of Kyiv” brigade is just one of several training projects that France and Europe have been working on with Ukraine. Since late 2022, over 63,000 Ukrainian troops have been trained under the European Union Military Assistance Mission, a EU-funded program that gets member states to teach and equip Kyiv’s forces.

The program has a $420 million budget for the next two years ending in November 2026.

January 3, 2025: This story was updated to reflect a response from the 155th Mechanized Brigade.

By the time it entered battle for the first time, at least 1,700 of its troops went absent without leave at numerous points. Some 500 soldiers were still missing, it was reported as recently as November.

The exodus came before the brigade was deployed to Pokrovsk, the key logistics hub anchoring Ukraine’s defence against Russian advances in the eastern Donetsk region.

Entering the battle in recent days, it suffered heavy losses, reportedly including some of its tanks and armoured vehicles.

It prompted the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigations to investigate the seemingly shambolic formation of the 155th.

The brigade, also known as Anne of Kyiv, was meant to have more than 5,800 troops and be equipped with some of the best equipment available, including Leopard tanks and French Caesar 155mm howitzers.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and Emmanuel Macron, his French counterpart, announced the $900 billion (£747 billion) project to much fanfare at an event to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing in June last year.

The brigade had spent nine months training in western Ukraine, Poland and France as part of an effort by Mr Zelensky to establish 14 new brigades equipped and prepared by the West.

Yuriy Butusov, a Ukrainian war correspondent, wrote: “This is indeed a crime, but the crime of not soldiers and officers – but the crime of the leaders of the supreme commander-in-chief, the Ministry of Defence and the general staff, who continue to waste their lives and public funds on new projects, instead of strengthening experienced and combat-capable brigades.”

Analysts observing the conflict have questioned Kyiv’s strategy of using new recruits and equipment donations to build novice brigades rather than replenish the country’s existing, battle-stricken forces.

In a report on the formation of the 155th, Mr Butusov observed that it had been riddled with problems from the offset.

Recruitment for the brigade began in June last year but was hampered by some 2,500 recruits being plucked to replenish other units before training could begin.

The 1,924 volunteers that remained were sent to France, but it emerged that only 51 of them had military experience of more than a year.

The majority (1,414) had only enrolled in the Ukrainian military in the two months before they were sent for their overseas training.

As the brigade trained in France, it continued to recruit, with more than 700 of those troops fleeing while remaining on Ukrainian territory between October and November.

When the 155th was eventually deployed to Pokrovsk, it was not given any drones – the main method of battlefield reconnaissance – and electronic warfare jammers by the state.

Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian social media influencer and military fundraiser, said he had recently sent kit to the brigade in the absence of government supplies.

The brigade only received cash from Kyiv for drones 10 days after entering the fight.

“As a result, the brand-new Leopard 2A4 tanks and VAB armoured vehicles suffered losses during the first attempts to use them on the front from enemy drones,” Mr Butusov wrote.

Colonel Dmytro Ryumshin was sacked as the brigade’s commander within days of it being sent to the front line.

Bohdan Krotevych, the chief of staff of Ukraine’s Azov Brigade, said: “Can it be idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with such equipment, having incomplete existing ones?”

Mr Butusov added: “The brigade’s servicemen became hostages of Zelensky’s PR project, which the authorities made no effort to actually implement competently.”

The brigade has since been effectively disbanded, with its elements spread assigned to battle-hardened brigades already defending Pokrovsk.