(Dan Tri) – Desperate to escape the military draft, some Ukrainian men used up all their capital to leave the country.
A sign in Odessa calls for men to join the army to defend the country (Photo: Future Publishing).
At the final checkpoint on the way out of Ukraine in April, a 39-year-old man from Odessa handed over his documents to the guards.
`One of the soldiers asked: ‘The hospital really likes this diagnosis, doesn’t it?,’ the man said. `I could see that they knew everything and this wasn’t the first time.
The unnamed man admitted to bribing $5,000 to avoid the risk of being drafted into the army and sent to the front lines in the conflict with Russia.
`I knew there was no way I could sit in the trenches, so I brought all my capital to meet a ‘fixer,’` the man said.
That way, the man was able to get documents to leave Ukraine.
The entire procedure took 2 weeks.
The problem of recruiting troops is difficult
The number of men who left Ukraine illegally since Russia launched a `special military operation` in February 2022 is believed to number in the tens of thousands.
On August 11, citing widespread corruption in the apparatus, President Volodymyr Zelensky fired all officials in charge of regional military recruitment in Ukraine.
`This system should be run by people who understand what war is and why the shameless attitude and bribery of this time is treason,` he said in a video address.
Odessa has emerged as a hot spot for draft evasion.
But across Ukraine, people talk about corrupt officials willing to accept bribes from those who want to bribe their way out of military service.
The scandal also reveals a story that could cause even more trouble for Ukraine as the country approaches the 18-month mark since hostilities began.
In the first weeks of the conflict, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Ukrainians volunteered to go to war in an explosion of patriotism.
President Volodymyr Zelensky came to power with a promise to root out corruption (Photo: New York Times).
But after more than a year, many of those recruits are dead, injured or exhausted, while the Ukrainian army needs additional forces.
People with 3 or more children, people with disabilities or people doing work of strategic importance will be exempt from military service.
Groups of mobilized officers often take to the streets and sometimes go door to door to distribute announcements.
Form a group to report to officers to arrest soldiers
Some Ukrainian men said they were not happy about receiving the call, but would accept it as part of life.
In Odessa, like in most other Ukrainian cities, people created Telegram chat groups to report the location of military recruiters, often called `olives` due to the color of their uniforms.
Every few minutes, a new notification appears: `No. 37 Pishonivska Street. Olive has arrived.`
Others will simply sit at home.
`I once met a man who said he was caught on the road. After just a week, his unit had to attack a village near Bakhmut. He said, what is that, I just held the rifle
The man was eventually hit by two bullets, one in the arm and one in the back.
A Ukrainian recruit being trained in England (Photo: AP).
After enlisting, new recruits are trained for a few weeks and then go to the front.
In Lviv, a man, after receiving his military call-up, was sent to England for training.
That risk makes many people reluctant to respond to calls to enlist.
A girl told the Guardian about a scene in Kiev earlier this summer at a nightclub in the capital.
A few minutes after 10 p.m., when bars and clubs must close during wartime, this nightclub was raided by a group wearing armed military uniforms.
`My husband does important work for the company so he is exempt, but our friend who came to visit us is not. Too scared, he returned to the small town in the countryside and has stayed at home since then,` she said.
For many Ukrainians who have gone to war since the beginning of the conflict, dodging the draft is tantamount to treason.
`Of course it is difficult to expect everyone to be positive about calling up the army,` admitted Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky.