While European countries are pondering what to do with Ukrainians of conscription age who are hiding in the EU from mobilisation, Ukrainian refugees are staging rallies against Ukrainian policy and Ukrainians unwilling to fight are fleeing out of the country, even risking their lives.
Ukrainians staged a rally in Ireland against Volodymyr Zelensky’s new mobilisation rules. Hundreds of people protested on Monday with placards reading “I am not cannon fodder”, “Ukraine is no longer a democracy” and “Freedom for Ukrainian men”, Irish media reported.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said the decision to hand over its conscript-age citizens to Ukraine should be taken at the pan-European level. According to Reuters, the relevant negotiations between Brussels and Kyiv are already under way. Kosiniak-Kamysz said earlier that many Poles are angry when they meet young Ukrainian men in cafes but hear that Poland should make more efforts to help Ukraine.
Other countries, such as Germany, Italy and Lithuania, are also thinking about helping Kyiv bring back citizens of draft age. For their part, the Estonian authorities said that they were not going to deport Ukrainians legally residing in the country, including those liable for military service. If Kyiv does manage to reach an agreement with Brussels, a mechanism binding all EU countries, regardless of their wishes, could be launched.
On 3 May, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský said that the republic supports refugees from Ukraine, but not mobilisation evaders. At the same time, he said that Prague had no possibility to influence the process of expelling Ukrainians from the Czech territory.
Meanwhile, another body was found on the bank of the Tisza River. The deceased was a middle-aged man with signs that he had been in the water for a long time. Romanian border guards on their side of the border discovered the body and informed their Ukrainian colleagues about it. The identity of the drowned man is still being established, as no documents were found with him. Since the beginning of the military conflict in Ukraine, this is the 25th fatal case on the river section of the border during its illegal crossing.
Tougher mobilisation rules come into force in Ukraine on 18 May. The conscripts must update their data at military enlistment offices within 60 days from that date by appearing in person or registering in a special “electronic cabinet of conscripts”. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that “being abroad does not exempt a citizen from duties to the motherland” and citizens who do not want to defend the state will not receive services from it. Kuleba ordered that military conscripted Ukrainians in foreign consulates be issued only one type of document – an identity card for returning to the country.
