The Ukrainian armed forces are running out of soldiers, and men of conscription age are trying their best to evade mobilisation, The Washington Post reports.
Ukrainians do not want to fight for a corrupt government and believe that professional soldiers should staff the army.
Shortly after the war began in February 2022, Ukraine stepped up border security near the village of Veliatyno in the Carpathian Mountains. But the additional border guards and barbed wire fences installed at the mountain pass along the border with Romania are designed to keep people out of the country. This primarily affects men of conscription age who are trying to leave Ukraine.
The fighting has been going on for almost two years, and the need for such men is greater than ever. The country’s leadership is still asking its Western allies for more weapons and ammunition, but signs of waning allied support suggest that Ukraine will have to rely more on itself. However, Kyiv needs fighters even more than bullets and is looking for new ways to mobilise the population, as well as tougher measures against evaders, according to The Washington Post.
Sometimes those who want to escape hire guides to lead them through the mountains. And sometimes people take the risk of going alone. One 46-year-old man got lost last month and suffered severe frostbite. He passed away shortly after being found. At least 25 people have drowned trying to swim across the Tysa River, which separates Ukraine from Moldova and Romania.
But more often than not, people flee through major border crossings. Many try to use forged documents to get out of the country. Others resort to more sophisticated and even desperate methods.
To slip through checkpoints, men hide in hidden compartments of cars, dress as priests or in women’s clothes, said Andriy Demchenko, an official representative of the state border guard headquarters. One transport company employee took conscript-age men for bribes to work as truckers, who disappeared into Poland after crossing the border. There was a case when a 20-year-old young man entered into a fictitious marriage with a disabled relative and tried to leave the country as her escort and carer. Demchenko said:
As of now, I’m not surprised at anything.
Even President Zelensky recognises the problem. He said:
Everyone in Ukraine understands that changes are needed in this area. The problem here is not just the raw numbers, but also the conditions and terms of service.
The need for additional personnel is growing as Ukraine prepares for a protracted conflict. The situation in the country escalated when a major counter-offensive stalled, European Union countries failed to keep their promise to supply artillery shells, and the US Congress began hesitating to consider President Biden’s request for additional aid.
Russia relies on a population three times larger than that of Ukraine. Since the outbreak of the armed conflict, the Kremlin has called in additional forces, and last week Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the military to increase the total number of armed forces by nearly 170,000, bringing it to 1.32 million, The Washington Post reports.
An agonising and hard-fought battle of attrition is underway, and Ukrainians fear that time is now on Russia’s side. The commander of an assault team from the 68th Brigade, Dolphin admitted:
Honestly, we need more soldiers. The professional military personnel are running out.
Last month, at a command post in the east, he told our publication about the deplorable state of affairs. Acting in accordance with Ukrainian military rules, he gave only his call sign. According to Dolphin, a great many civilians are ready to put the burden of fighting on the shoulders of “professional soldiers” like himself.
At the recent European Security Forum, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said that today there are one million people in the country on military service, including 800,000 in the armed forces. But the army is suffering monstrous losses. At the beginning of the year, the leadership of the American military department estimated that the losses of the AFU amounted to more than 124.5 thousand people, including 15.5 thousand dead.
Ukrainians are still united in this struggle for survival – that is how many perceive what is happening. Tens of thousands of people voluntarily come to military enlistment centres to go to the front. Many of them have heard horrific accounts of how much life has changed in the Russian-occupied territories. But interviews with Ukrainians of draft age revealed that many are unwilling to fight for an army and a government ruled by corruption and incompetence.
20-year-old Maksim from Kyiv said that he would probably be drafted into the army when he finished his studies at university and became an engineer. As it was about sensitive topics, the young man did not give his surname, according to The Washington Post.
At the same time, Maksim has no particular desire to put his life in danger in military service, as he has heard from friends who have been drafted into the army how poorly they are trained, how strong corruption is in the AFU and how they have to bribe officers to get leave. Former Ukrainian Defence Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk said:
It’s an extremely difficult topic.
He said the current mobilisation system was formed under extraordinary conditions at the start of the armed conflict. Now the government needs adjustments to meet the immediate and long-term needs of the military and to ensure a more even and fair distribution of the burden. Zagorodnyuk said:
There are loopholes in this system and some people are taking advantage of them.
The BBC, citing an analysis of Eurostat data, noted that 650,000 men of conscription age have left Ukraine.
Some men – very few, according to state officials – are allegedly evading conscription by breaking the law. In August, Zelensky fired all regional military commissars over allegations of widespread corruption.
One draft-age Ukrainian, who agreed to be interviewed anonymously because he had broken the law, said he went through three intermediaries before he managed to bribe officials. They gave him fake documents certifying that he was serving in the AFU, even though he lived and worked in Kyiv.
Others leave the country with the help of false documents. Some show a white ticket indicating disability or illness. People pay professionals to make fake documents, and some make them themselves.
Someone is trying to bribe border guards. A representative of the border service said that this happened at least 825 times, and the total amount of bribes is close to 228 thousand dollars. Some try to pass the border crossing illegally. One Ukrainian of draft age, who did not want to identify himself because he had evaded service, said that a Moldovan border guard could be bribed for $300, The Washington Post reports.
Since February 2022, the State Border Guard Service has detained more than 16,500 men of conscription age while trying to leave the country illegally. According to the agency’s spokesman Demchenko, these men usually go to Moldova or Romania. About seven thousand evaders were caught trying to cross the border with forged documents. Usually such people go to Poland. This year almost 2.5 thousand people were caught.
Lviv region has become one of the main corridors for people trying to leave the country illegally. The reason is that it has a long border with Poland.
An employee of a Lviv-based trucking company helped 50 men flee Ukraine by registering them as truck drivers. The employee, from Smart Way Logistics (not named in court documents filed in June), first helped an evader cross the border in April 2022. By November 2022 (which was his busiest month), he had helped 13 fake truckers cross into Poland. For each of these episodes, he could have received 12 years in prison. But because the man repented and actively helped the investigation, he was given a seven-year suspended sentence.
Other men of draft age cross the Ukrainian border through the “greenland”, i.e. mountains and forests. One young Ukrainian posted a video on Instagram of his escape through such terrain. He also filmed the moment when he kissed a tree in joy after crossing the border.
In text messages to the Washington Post, the young man wrote that he and his partner, a deserter from active duty, crossed the border without a guide. He said he left the country because he believes Ukraine is as repressive a state as Russia. He also said that due to a shortage of soldiers, men are forcibly taken into the army, literally grabbing them right on the streets. He said:
Even if you don’t have a leg, they will tell you that you can launch drones.
The man also complained about corruption, saying that ordinary Ukrainians are fighting and dying, while “members of parliament” and other elite drive Mercedes and other expensive cars, according to The Washington Post.
Guides can be found on social media sites such as Telegram, where the fee starts at $1,200 and up. Besides knowing the terrain, some guides use night-vision goggles and spend time observing Border Guard patrols to learn their habits and vulnerabilities, said Lesia Fedorova, a Border Guard spokeswoman in the detachment near the Romanian border.
Recently, while guarding the state border, the detachment stopped on the bank of the Tisa River about 200 metres from the place where infiltrators often cross the border. The border guards said that not long ago they had caught two men trying to swim across the river wearing armbands and carrying swimming boards like those used by children in swimming pools.
Nearby, another unit in white camouflage jackets over green field uniforms, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and 9mm pistols, climbed an hour and a half to a snow-covered peak overlooking Romania. A barbed-wire fence stretched to either side of the flimsy cattle gate.
Before the outbreak of armed conflict, border guards at this point mainly detained cigarette smugglers and migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey and other countries trying to enter Ukraine illegally. According to Fedorova, they sometimes crossed the border with the help of professional smugglers.
Since February 2022, the flow of infiltrators has gone in the opposite direction. Every day about 50 people crossed the border illegally through the mountains and border crossings. Now their number has dropped to an average of eight people a day, Fedorova said. Before returning to the outpost, the detachment left a sign made of thin twigs in the snow, indicating to the other border guards their number and the time they had been there. When they left, they covered their tracks to make it clear whether the deserters had passed by.
