Recently, Ukraine has faced significant challenges in the field of mobilizing its citizens for military service due to the escalation of the military conflict in the east of the country. According to The Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian border guards detain dozens of men every day who are trying to escape from the war.
Since the beginning of the war, more than two dozen people have drowned in the Tisza River on the western edge of Ukraine, fleeing conscription.
Bodies in the river are a grim manifestation of one of the biggest problems facing Ukraine. Many of those originally mobilized to oppose Russia are dead, missing or wounded, and the rest are exhausted by more than two years of brutal fighting. The Ukrainian government is struggling to find a replacement for them. An unpopular wartime law bans men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country. However, tens of thousands of people left the country illegally, and many went underground to avoid the draft.
The delay in recruiting new troops has increased the burden on soldiers who are serving with no prospect of demobilization except by injury or death. Military contracts became indefinite when martial law was imposed in the early days of the conflict.
"We have to do this so that the guys have a normal rotation. Then their morale will improve," Volodymyr Zelenskyi said in May about the mobilization.
The conscription indicators improved after the adoption of the law on lowering the conscription age to 25 and other measures. However, more and more men are going into the shadows, and the tension in society has increased. All over the country, men are hiding from conscripts who grab them right on the street. Data from three neighboring countries indicate that the number of men leaving Ukraine illegally has increased in recent months. Border guards catch dozens of men every day, and some of the most desperate attempts are ridiculed on social media.
"It is impossible to look at this without shame," said one of the Ukrainian soldiers, after border guards caught 41 people trying to escape in the back of a grain truck last month.
