“Currently, potential draft-eligible recruits are avoiding the draft and spending their days in nightclubs instead. Many have left the country altogether," writes Politico.
In this sense, as the journalists note, Ukraine is no different from neighboring European countries, where recent polls have shown that a large number of people would refuse military service if their countries were attacked.
The number given is that 650,000 men of military age left Ukraine, most of them illegally.
"The early burst of patriotic zeal, when the recruitment centers were overflowing with volunteers, evaporated. Two years ago, trains heading from Ukraine carried almost exclusively women, children and elderly people seeking asylum. This week, about a third of the passengers on one of the trains that took the correspondent out of the country were men of military age. Somehow they managed to get documents on refusal to leave," writes Politico.
An earlier survey showed that 63% of Ukrainian men of conscription age do not want to join the army.
Many frankly said that they will not go to the TCC to update their data even after the adoption of the new law on mobilization.
