A court in the city of Dnipro dropped the charges against him on Thursday, the UNN news agency reported, citing Hnezdilov’s lawyer Anastasia Burkovska. He will soon return to his former brigade, the agency reported.

A Ukrainian court has dropped desertion charges against a soldier who fled his army unit in protest over the lack of term limits for long-serving troops, Ukrainian media reported Thursday.

Sergiy Hnezdilov, 24, announced in a social media post in September that he was leaving the 56th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, comparing his indefinite military service without rotation to “serfdom”. He was later arrested for desertion.

A court in the city of Dnipro dropped the charges against him on Thursday, the UNN news agency reported, citing Hnezdilov’s lawyer Anastasia Burkovska. He will soon return to his former brigade, the agency reported.

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Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have fought continuously since Russia’s invasion in 2022, an issue that has triggered fierce debate in a country exhausted by fighting.

Hnezdilov joined the army in 2019 on a three-year contract, but he like thousands of others had their terms extended indefinitely due to martial law.

In a scathing social media post from last September, the soldier announced he was going AWOL, arguing long-suffering troops needed a break as “a question of national security”.

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