Men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave Ukraine, which is in a state of war. Many military age-men, however, will do anything to avoid the army and almost certain death on the front.
I saw a severed head and someone being shot,
a Ukrainian conscript said in his recollection of the war in an article in the French newspaper Le Figaro. He escaped the horrors after a month's service, even though he knew his act would be followed by humiliation and the confiscation of his property.
Faced with the violence and reality of war, many Ukrainian soldiers chose to take advantage of the opportunities to leave the front line provided by the Ukrainian network of corruption, which President Volodymyr Zelensky is working to eliminate. A man, for example paid a bribe of five thousand dollars to escape from the army and have a car with a government license plate drop him off in a forest near Hungary, where he climbed through a hole in the fence to flee from the country.
This is not an isolated case; there have been many reports of recruiting officers accepting bribes in return for declaring military age men unfit for duty or finding some other excuse to exempt them from military service.
According to Ukrainian border police spokesman Andriy Demchenko, 13,600 people have been arrested for trying to leave the country illegally since the start of the war. Some 6,100 have tried to do so with forged documents.
Ukrainian deserters face up to 12 years in prison, while those who refuse to serve in the military may be sentenced to five years behind bars. It comes as little surprise that many choose to flee the country.
In August, President Zelensky dismissed all regional officials in charge of conscription in a bid to curb the spreading of corruption in the ranks of conscription officers. Those dismissed were replaced with veteran soldiers.
Across Europe, Ukrainians who refuse to fight are despised and looked down upon by their compatriots, those interviewed told the French newspaper. A Ukrainian man who fled the country and became a taxi driver in Warsaw said that one of his clients had accused him of being a coward and hiding while the men fought at the front. Another refugee said that
he understood that this is a divisive issue, but he had a family who needed him and he had to take care of them.
A young man left his home country before his 18th birthday because of family pressure while his father was fighting on the front, the portal writes. He said that if something happened to his father, he would remain the only man in the family.
Cover photo: A wounded Ukrainian soldier is treated by medics at a field hospital on the front line in the Donetsk region of Bahmut, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 26 February 2023. (Photo: MTI/AP/Jevhen Maloletka)
