30 People Have Died Trying to Flee Conscription Since War Started, Ukraine Says

Dozens of Ukrainians attempting to escape being forced into the military to fight Russia have died, the national border guard reveals.

Tens of thousands of military age males successfully fled abroad, as many again were caught trying to flee, after Russia re-invaded Ukraine in 2022, but now the numbers of people escaping the draft who were killed in the attempt has been revealed. Speaking this week Andrii Demchenko, who wears the uniform of a Colonel and is cited as an “aide to the chief of the State Border Service of Ukraine” spoke out against human traffickers who take cash in return for helping sneak out refugees from Ukraine’s martial law to Europe.

Since Russia’s renewed invasion in 2022, it became illegal for any man of military age to leave Ukraine except with express permission of the government.

Col. Demchenko revealed there were a remarkable 450 “criminal groups specializing in illegal transportation of people across the border” that had been discovered during the period of martial law, and in most cases of “illegal border crossings” the individuals were being assisted by smugglers.

Around 30 Ukrainians trying to escape the country undetected have been found dead since the war began, Demchenko said. Given an explanation for those deaths, he cited the difficulty of swimming across mountain rivers to escape Ukraine, and even of fleeing citizens having “encounters with wild animals in the mountains, which can be seriously life-threatening.”

In earlier reports, it was stated some Ukrainians had frozen to death while trying to cross the Carpathian mountains to escape military service.

The border force Colonel also explained some less dangerous means 0f young Ukrainian men trying to escape the war which had nevertheless been detected by officials. So many had tried to flee the country by dressing in women’s clothes, he said, it had become “perceived as commonplace”. He said in other cases men attempted to hide inside secret compartments of cars or other vehicles.

Col. Demchenko condemned the would-be escapees of being unpatriotic. He said: “…illegal exits are meticulously prepared for, because this is where considerable amounts of money are involved. And when you see all these attempts to leave Ukraine illicitly, it becomes sad. Lawbreakers spend the money that enrich criminals; the money would better be donated to the units of the defense forces that are defending Ukraine at the cost of their own lives.”

As previously reported, large numbers of Ukrainians fled the country in the early days of the war rather than be conscripted to fight against Russia. A November 2023 assessment put those who made it into neighboring European states at around 20,000 men. The means of many escapees became a major scandal in Ukraine after it was revealed a network of military recruitment offices were taking large bribes to give individuals paperwork attesting them as medically unfit for service, and consequently eligible to go abroad.

In 2023, President Zelensky responded to this scandal by dismissing every regional recruitment office head in the country and arresting dozens of officials.

While Ukraine once claimed military age men fleeing abroad involved such a small number of people it didn’t meaningfully imperil the national defence, the country is now struggling with finding new soldiers and, having lowered the conscription age, is now talking more about bringing more citizens back from other countries. While Ukrainian expatriates may have felt safe in world-asylum state Germany, the country has engaged in some initial discussions about returning potential soldiers.

Germany’s Die Welt reported in March there are some 167,854 military-age Ukrainian citizen males in the country.

Just last week Ukraine’s government said it was taking fresh action to force fighting-age citizens abroad to come home, and would no longer be issuing new passports at consulates abroad to advance this, forcing men to come back to Ukraine itself if they wanted new documents. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said “It’s about justice — justice in the relationship between Ukrainian men abroad and Ukrainian men inside of Ukraine”.