‘Why should I return to fight?’ – Ukraine’s expatriates refusing to go home
WHEN Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, Vladimir sent his ex-wife and their four-year-old son abroad for safety. Like most Ukrainian men, he stayed behind, barred from leaving by martial law that required men of military age up to 60 to stay.
However, after two years alone, and having been declared medically unfit to serve, he decided to join them in Germany.
“A child needs a father,” he said. Now he could be stranded after a controversial law stripped fighting age men abroad of consular assistance.
Those between 18 and 60 will only be able to renew their passports from inside Ukraine, meaning they will have to return and risk the draft.
The move, which is designed to help plug a dire manpower gap in the Ukrainian armed forces, addresses long-running tensions over men who managed to evade the ban on foreign travel that was imposed for the duration of the war.
Last week, Poland suggested it could deport Ukrainian men back for conscription.
Critics, including some serving soldiers, however, have warned that the new move may be unconstitutional and will simply encourage those who are already overseas to stay away.
For his part, Vladimir, 39, will not be heeding the call to return. “It was morally difficult [to leave] but I decided my family needs me. I don’t feel any kind of pressure from family or friends to go back. My mates all understand my situation.”
Ukraine’s military commissariats, or local recruiting offices, were overwhelmed with volunteers in the first months of the invasion but ebbing enthusiasm and high casualties over the past two years have left many units dangerously short of soldiers.
Ukrainian and Western military planners have identified manpower shortage as one of three critical issues that must be addressed if Ukraine is to resist the current Russian offensive and eventually regain the initiative.
“The immediate focus has been on munitions, especially air defence artillery, on fortifications, which includes proper defensive lines, and thirdly, on this question of manpower,” one Western official said of recent talks with Ukraine.
“As far as putting people on planes goes, we have not been asked about that and I don’t imagine being asked about it either,” the official added when asked if his government would send Ukrainian men home.
The government has taken a number of recent measures to raise new troops, including lowering the draft age from 27 to 25, but last week’s announcement appears to have caused some confusion in Kyiv.
One Ukrainian official told The Telegraph that they were not entirely sure how the law would work because such issues as exemptions for those legitimately unable to fight – such as Vladimir – do not seem to have been addressed.
Dmytro Lazutkin, the press secretary for the Ukrainian defence ministry, said there were no plans to issue conscription notices overseas.
“The ministry of defence cannot comment on the actions of the foreign ministry. I think it’s pretty unrealistic,” he told Radio Free Europe.
It has also drawn a mixed reaction from Ukraine’s allies. Wladyslaw Kosiniak-kamysz, Poland’s defence minister, said “Ukrainian citizens have obligations towards the state” and that Warsaw would help “in ensuring that those who are subject to compulsory military service go to Ukraine.”
German authorities have said some Ukrainian men will be able to extend their residency in the country even if their passports expire as long as there is some way to identify them.
Men between the ages of 18 and 60 have officially been banned from leaving Ukraine since Volodymyr Zelensky, the president, introduced martial law on the first day of the Russian invasion on Feb 24 2022.
Many were able to obtain exemptions, either by being declared unfit for military service, having three or more children or by gaining special permission to travel from the government. Others tried to leave illegally, some by being smuggled across Ukraine’s western borders.
Mr Zelensky cracked down on officials abusing exemptions to travel last year. The bar for being passed fit to serve has also been lowered.
The European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, says 4.3 million Ukrainians are living in EU countries, 860,000 of them are men aged 18 or older.
Britain says it has issued 256,200 visas under its scheme for Ukrainian refugees. It is not clear how many of them were issued to men of fighting age.
Ukrainian men living abroad told The Telegraph they have no plans to return to fight and considered the law as it now stands deeply unfair.
“My passport is still valid,” 39-yearold Vladimir said, “but I think for many people who came here from occupied areas like Mariupol, the situation is a bit insulting. Russia destroyed their homes, and now their own country is taking a stick to them.”
Volodymyr, a builder from Western Ukraine who has been living and working in the Czech Republic for most of the past eight years, said: “The law is not fair. And all my Ukrainian friends from the Czech Republic, Lutsk and Kyiv think so.
“Nobody is happy with it. The government is forcing us, and with such laws we will step away from them. We will take citizenship in other countries.”
“People won’t return. The longer the war goes on, the more laws like this are passed, the more people hate Ukraine and the government,” he added.
“Why should I return to fight? For what? Why didn’t the government care about labour migrants like me before the war? Every day we have less and less territory and fewer and fewer people. Some have been killed, others swam the Tisza river just to escape.”
The Tisza, a tributary of the Danube, marks a 10-mile stretch of Ukraine’s border with Hungary.
One man who admitted leaving the country illegally and is currently in Indonesia said he felt no obligation to fight for the country and considered himself an observer rather than a participant in the war.
Perhaps surprisingly, the law has even drawn criticism from some soldiers. “I absolutely agree with them,” said Nikita Ruzhenko, a recruiting sergeant with Ukraine’s Kharkiv-based 113th brigade, when asked what he thought of the opinions for these men.
“To tell them they left Ukraine so they are not Ukrainians any more is not normal. We need to invite people back, to greet them gladly, and not tell them they are not Ukrainians. It’s bulls--t.”
“This law won’t work properly. It is a political compromise and no one wants to take responsibility. It is not good for the military and it is not good for civilians. It is for everyone and no one.”
Sgt Ruzhenko, who lost an eye in the first year of the war but, like many wounded, is still deemed fit for service and cannot demobilise, admits recruitment is currently dire.
While his ideal soldier would be 27 to 30 years’ old, the average candidate is around 45 or 50, from the social and economic margins of society, and often in poor health.
“The doctors pass them as capable,” he said. “When they get to their units the commanders see people who are tired, with bad health, some with chronic diseases.”
The fix, he argues, is not in threatening people overseas but allowing people to choose their units.
“No one has listened to the military. The military wants straight recruitment to the brigades without going through the commissariats. It will be much more effective and much fairer. This will lead us to victory and the people will serve where they want, how they want, and with people they want,” he said.
“Lots of people want to serve, they just don’t want to be assigned to a ‘meat brigade’,” he said, using slang for units where “low level commanders and high level commanders don’t give a f--- about their people”.
He refused to give examples but said all soldiers knew who the good and bad units and commanders were.
“Brigades who understand people are very valuable and they must be kept alive,” he said. They would naturally expand and grow stronger, the bad brigades would wither and eventually disappear, and Ukraine would end up with a more efficient and professional military.
“It would be like free market recruitment – and now we have the USSR.”
‘The law is not fair ... nobody is happy ... we will step away, take citizenship in other countries’ ‘We need to invite people back, to greet them gladly and not tell them they are no longer Ukrainians’