‘I am not made for war’: the men fleeing Ukraine to evade conscription

The autumn cannot arrive soon enough for Dmytro, when his handlers have promised to get him out of Ukraine.

For the past month, the 31-year-old photographer from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has been holed up in his flat, rarely stepping outside, to avoid being conscripted into the army. “I want to leave the country. My mind can’t take being trapped here any more,” Dmytro said.

Since the start of the war, thousands of Ukrainian men have illegally crossed the Ukrainian border to dodge conscription, despite a nationwide ban prohibiting men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving.

Attempts to flee the country are expected to increase after Ukraine’s recent adoption of new sweeping mobilisation measures, which allow the military to call up more soldiers and impose stricter penalties for draft evasion.

“I never thought about leaving until the mobilisation laws were introduced. But I can’t stay in my flat forever,” Dmytro said.

Related: Zelenskiy visits troops in eastern Ukraine in effort to boost morale

Through friends who had already fled, Dmytro obtained contacts and approached individuals online promising to facilitate his escape for a hefty fee, starting from €8,000 (£6,800).

“I am not made for war. I can’t kill people, even if they are Russians. I won’t last long on the front … I want to build a family and see the world. I am not ready to die,” he said.

Dmytro was unsure if he could trust the handlers, who had recently raised their prices to meet the growing demand, but said he saw no other options.

More than two years into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s armed forces are desperately short of soldiers.

Since the start of the war, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Ukrainians have volunteered to serve at the front, helping to maintain the country’s independence and repel the initial attack.

Many of those initial soldiers are dead , wounded or simply exhausted, leaving the military to recruit among a more reluctant pool of men.

To fill the ranks, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, last April signed a controversial law that lowered the mobilisation age from 27 to 25. Under the new guidelines, draft evaders can lose their driving licence, have their bank accounts frozen and property seized.

Even before the latest mobilisation drive, more than 20,000 men are believed to have fled the country to avoid service, some of them swimming and drowning in attempting to cross Ukraine’s border into Romania.

In April, Andriy Demchenko, the head of the Ukrainian state border guard service, reported that at least 30 Ukrainian men had died attempting to cross, though the real number is probably much higher, as some bodies are very unlikely ever to be recovered.

As mobilisation officers roam the cities to draft men of military age, many such as Dmytro have hatched plans to leave, fearing they will not survive long on the frontlines.

Since the war’s beginning, the draft has been criticised as chaotic and tarnished by corruption. Ukraine has intensified its efforts to stop people fleeing across borders and evading the draft, highlighted by Zelenskiy’s dismissal of all regional military recruitment chiefs in April. This dismissal followed reports of officers accepting bribes to exempt men from conscription.

But the practice appears to be hard for the authorities to root out.

Andrei, a 23-year-old IT worker from Odesa, shared with the Guardian a message he had received from a handler in late May with information on how he could leave the country. The detailed instructions outlined two escape pathways: one involved crossing the Moldovan border using a fake passport, while the other option would list Andrei as an artist, a category occasionally permitted to exit the country. Both schemes cost about €8,000, the handler wrote.

Last summer, Andrei had already attempted to cross the border into Moldova using a fake medical certificate that said he was unfit for service.

That attempt failed when border patrol questioned the authenticity of the certificate. He was promptly taken to a conscription office, but was released after paying a bribe.

“The journey is only getting more difficult and border officials are less eager to take bribes. I don’t think I will be this lucky a second time if things go wrong,” he said.

Andrei said he was still considering the handler’s offer, adding that the fee would be his life savings. “For now, I am on a self-imposed house arrest. I don’t leave my flat at all,” he said.

Some of his mobilised friends had already been deployed and killed, he said, which damaged his mental health.

There are no exact figures for how many men are hiding or planning to leave, but in big cities Telegram channels with thousands of members have sprung up where users report sightings of state representatives to help others avoid them.

Interviews with five men who were hiding at home to avoid conscription revealed a variety of reasons for doing it.

Many voiced their dread of perishing in a battle marked by gruesome trench fighting and a brutal death rate. Others mentioned their resistance to conscription because of what they perceived as inadequate training before being sent to the frontlines. Some chose to avoid mobilisation on complex family grounds.

Mykhailo, a gym instructor from Mariupol working in Kyiv, said his parents were still living in the coastal city that Russia occupied in the spring of 2022 after a brutal siege.

“My family in Mariupol will be in direct danger if the Russians find out that I am fighting,” he said.

“I love my country and want to fight, but family comes first. It is a very difficult situation.”

Mykhailo, like others, has been avoiding going out, ordering food at home and only venturing to his nearby gym.

“I recently missed my best friend’s birthday because I was too afraid to leave. It’s a very restricted life, to say the least,” he remarked.

Mykhailo said several of his friends had already fled the country and he occasionally considered that option.

While overall support for the country’s troops remain high and polls show that there is still a considerable number of men willing to be mobilised, Ukraine’s conscription drive risks dividing Ukrainian society, already plagued by war fatigue.

Many Ukrainian soldiers at the front, or those who have returned after being injured, criticise draft dodging, arguing that the practice weakens their country’s war effort as Russian forces make advances across multiple fronts.

Standing outside a cafe in Kyiv, leaning on a crutch, Roman, who was discharged from service after a shell hit his right leg, expressed his disappointment when hearing stories of men hiding or attempting to flee the country.

“I understand that people are scared, but we simply need new recruits to keep fighting,” Roman said, requesting that his last name not be published.

“If not us, then who will protect this country?”

*Some names have been changed