Ukrainians flee to avoid conscription

by Alex Miller

Today most Ukrainians have lost their patriotic zeal. Guided by a common instinct of self-preservation and fear of serious injury or unwanted death they are not ready to sacrifice themselves.
The new Ukrainian law on military mobilisation further aggravates the situation with conscription into the army. Numerous attempts of government to straighten out the mobilisation process have generally failed. Territorial Recruiting Centres (known as TCK) cannot meet the government’s recruitment needs.
Large-scale military defeats, a high number of losses, an acute shortage of weapons, the complete absence of social benefits from the state, -- all these creates conditions when the majority of Ukrainian men prefer to flee to Europe and other countries. 
According to the Belgian newspaper, Politico, during this time more than 650,000 Ukrainian men fit for service fled from the country. However, the actual statistical figures are much higher.
The London Guardian on 29th June 2024 reported persistent attempts by Ukrainians liable for military service to escape and leave Ukraine in order to avoid conscription. The publisher cited legal inconsistencies and a ban on leaving Ukraine for all men between 25 and 60 years old, and said thousands of men are fleeing Ukraine by crossing the border illegally. These men do not want to share the tragic fate of hundreds of thousands of their compatriots who died on the battlefield or were seriously injured. 
According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Border Guards of Ukraine – I Matveychuk – every day more than 100 men of military age try to illegally cross the border to get into Western Europe. At the same time, reservists who stay behind are doing all sorts of things to avoid being recalled to the armed forces. They illegally ignore military registration and enlistment offices and document checks. They steer clear  public places (such as retail stores, shops, markets and cultural events), avoid open movement on the streets and hide their location and change their addresses to avoid official employment. 
The American publishing house Bloomberg reports that many men have changed their actual place of residence and it is impossible to find them. Only half of the 4,5 million relocated men were officially registered for a change of address. 
Since the beginning of the military conflict, the TCK call-up centres have filed more than 180,000 administrative reports for violation of military registration, and also submitted more than 400,000 requests to regional police departments to search for military service evaders.
At the same time, the failure of the mobilisation campaign in Ukraine has led to an acute shortage of military personnel, which daily increases the risk of the front collapsing along the line from city of Kherson to the city of Kharkov. 
The French radio station Europe 1, citing the source in the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reported that the personnel shortage in the Ukrainian army exceeded 40 per cent of the actual figures of the officially stated need.
The top commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not hide the bleak picture and, in their belligerent statements they are trying to encourage the political leadership to urgently change the situation. General Yuri Sodol, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in a speech in the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada), raised the issue of more than 10-fold numerical superiority of Russian personnel over the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Finding itself in a desperate situation, the Kiev regime is forced to fill the acute personnel shortage by starting the total mobilisation of all men previously exempted from conscription, including those with foreign and dual citizenship. Now the TCK enlistment centres have started a man-hunt for more than a 100,000 men of military age with dual citizenship and passports of other countries, permanently or temporarily residing on the territory of Ukraine, having secondary citizenship or passports of other countries.
The Israeli Embassy in Kiec reported an increase in the number of cases of detention of  people with dual citizenship attempting to leave Ukraine. Tel-Aviv has officially recommended that Israelis holding dual Ukrainian citizenship avoid travelling to Ukraine.. 
A similar message was distributed by the US diplomatic mission in Ukraine. In a statement, the US diplomatic agency said that as of 1st  June 2024, the official moratorium on the mobilisation of residents who have lived outside Ukraine for a long time and have passports of another citizenship has been terminated while emphasising that Washington is limited in its ability to change Ukrainian legislation that regulate military status and mobilization process in Ukraine. 
In addition, on 5th June, 2024 Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, announced, that the government of Ukraine is calling up members of the Hungarian community who have dual Ukrainian and Hungarian citizenship. Now “Hungary is the only European country whose citizens officially serve in the Ukrainian army and die in war” he said.