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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
🚫🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡 Banik and the mobilization avoidance return program
The Ministry of Defense called the result of the simplified return program after mobilization avoidance positive. There is no exact figure. There are “thousands” and comparisons to the personnel of two to three brigades. The public face of this report became Deputy Minister Mstyslav Banik. His statements made up the entire public record of the program: from the launch in June to the outcome in October.
Banik did not come to the Ministry of Defense from the General Staff. In 2019 he was responsible at the Ministry of Digital Transformation for launching Diia.
In 2024 he volunteered for CODE 9.2, rising from soldier to lieutenant.
In 2025 he became head of the ministry’s digital products and ran Army+ and Reserve+. He was appointed deputy minister on 25 March 2026, as part of Mykhailo Fedorov’s team. After the minister changed, in August 2026, he told Suspilne that he was staying on in Yevhen Khmara’s team on the same procurements. He comments on mobilization avoidance, not the Chief of the General Staff. The program was stitched to the service he already ran.
The legal start was not his. On 28 November 2024 the president signed a law exempting from criminal liability those who went into mobilization avoidance for the first time or who deserted and returned voluntarily. The deadline of 1 January 2025 was extended several times. According to the State Bureau of Investigations, from 29 November 2024 to 1 March 2025 nearly 21,1 thousand returned. The BBC counted the reverse flow: from December 2024 to February 2025 more than 45 thousand left their units without permission. Returns did not catch up with departures even before Banik’s window.
Banik himself announced a separate simplified window. On 15 June at a briefing he said the mechanism launched on Saturday, it runs for 100 days, until 20 September, for those whose mobilization avoidance was recorded before 12 June. Quote from the first week: “We already have the first 80 transfer requests. 22 have already been approved. And some of these people have already arrived at brigades.”
The promise was service-oriented: “We accept this application, the brigade confirms it, and this person gets a certain grace period, 72 hours, to arrive at the military unit. No more discomfort, no more complications. Everything should be humane, serviceable.” He separately explained the “white ribbon”: a digital status for the police, military law enforcement, and checkpoints that the person is en route to the unit, not wanted.
After the request is approved in Army ID a white ribbon “En route” appears. For the Armed Forces and the State Service for Special Transport it is valid for 5 days, not 72 hours as stated at the briefing. If they don’t arrive — it turns red again. In the National Guard, after the commander’s order to arrive, they are given 48 hours. A paper summons from the recruitment center is also for 5 days. So Banik’s first public promise and the working regulation already diverged at the start.
On 31 July his quote sits under an expansion of the list to more than 70 units. “Drivers, UAV operators, clerks, riflemen — the military needs everyone. More than 70 of the most effective units are ready to accept.” The logic is the same: choose a brigade and a position in Army+, indicate experience, don’t go to military law enforcement or the reserve battalion. Returns only within one’s structure — the Armed Forces, the National Guard, or the State Service for Special Transport. Cases from 13 June were not included in the program. A new outflow proceeded in parallel with advertising the return.
The Office of the Prosecutor General, until the fall of 2025, recorded since the start of the invasion 231,5 thousand cases for mobilization avoidance and 53,2 thousand for desertion. May 2025 — 18 134 cases in a month, September — 17 176. They then closed this statistic.
On 14 January 2026 Fedorov said in parliament that 200 thousand are in mobilization avoidance. Two to three brigades are roughly 6–15 thousand if counting full strength. This is an estimate by analogy, not his figure. Even allowing for double counting, the October result is a few percent of the problem his own minister called attention to in January.
The questions about his statements are direct. Why, from 80 requests in the first week to the October outcome, is there still no absolute number: how many applied, how many were approved, how many entered the roster, how many remained after the first month of payments? Why did 72 hours from the briefing become 5 days in the regulation, and how many white ribbons went dark red? Why does the evaluation “positive” come from the curator of digital intake and procurements, rather than the General Staff with a balance of arrivals and departures?
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