In order to replenish the ranks of an army depleted by more than two years of exhausting battles, the Ukrainian government is passing a new mobilisation law aimed at increasing the number of soldiers and stepping up border patrols to catch draft dodgers, The New York Times reports.
Ukrainian officials have gone further, targeting men who have already left the country. This week, the government announced that Ukrainian consulates had suspended issuing new passports and providing other consular services to men of draft age living abroad.
Under the new rules, men aged between 18 and 60 would not be able to leave the country. However, some of them had been abroad before the rule came into force, while others had since left the country illegally.
The ban will last from April 23 to May 18 when the mobilisation law recently passed by the Ukrainian parliament comes into force. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has stated that it is still working out the details of what services will be available once the broader mobilisation law comes into force.
Critics argue that the move could end up sparking divisions between Ukrainians at home and abroad rather than increasing the number of soldiers. According to European estimates, between 600,000 and 850,000 Ukrainian men currently live in the European Union.
However, the government claimed that by suspending consular services, it was responding to demands for fairness in society. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba declared that a man leaving the country was “showing his state that he does not care about its survival.”
Heated debate
The Ukrainian government’s actions have intensified the heated debate within the country over the measure. Volodymyr Viatrovych, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity Party, called the new rule “a blatantly illegal and [an] extremely harmful step.”
“Obviously, the government wants to force Ukrainians to return to Ukraine as soon as possible. However, the result will be exactly the opposite.”
Many Ukrainian men who lived abroad for years with their families before the war in Ukraine broke out in February 2022 were outraged, as they had no plans to return for war but were actively helping with donations and advocated for more aid to Ukraine, according to Politico.
Ukrainians who did not want to serve in the army would not return to the draft register anyway due to the ban, but could lose their legal status abroad, Oleksandr Pavlichenko, acting head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, stated.
In some countries, Ukrainians will begin to lose their legal status as persons under protection. They will have to apply for refugee status.
At the same time, active servicemen, many of whom have been fighting on the front line for more than two years without rest, were dissatisfied that the new mobilisation law did not include conditions for demobilisation. However, they also considered the new rule a fair and just step.
Ukrainian military medic Alina Mykhailova, the widow of a commander killed in action, described the rule as a restoration of some “small percentage” of justice for Ukrainian servicemen.
“No one had been talking about justice for servicemen in our country for a long time. But here it is, at least some small percentage of it. No one sent us there either, but for some reason, we are there. If you don’t like it, give up your citizenship and go to hell.”
The Foreign Ministry stated that it would provide additional clarifications on the procedure for obtaining consular services in order not to leave hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men abroad in a state of uncertainty.
Men who left the country
In November, the BBC, citing data on illegal border crossings from Romania, Moldova, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, released a documentary on the 20,000 men who left Ukraine because of mobilisation. According to the data, 19,740 men illegally crossed the borders between February 2022 and August 2023.
Another 21,000 men tried to leave the country on foot, by water or with forged documents, but were detained by Ukrainian border guards. About 7,000 Ukrainians among them hoped to get out of the country using fake documents that proved invalid benefits or illnesses.
Ukrainian officers used thermal imaging cameras to detect the men crossing the border at night.
