First, Vladyslav stopped going into Kyiv’s city center to avoid draft officers checking papers. Then he stopped exercising at the gym because of patrols in his neighborhood. Now, he spends most of his days holed up in his apartment, often using his binoculars to watch officers serving draft notices to commuters leaving a nearby subway station.
“They’re everywhere now,” said Vladyslav, 45, who, like other Ukrainians in hiding interviewed for this article, requested that his last name not be published. “I’ll try to avoid getting caught,” he said, “but I’m not sure it’s possible.”
As Russian forces are on the attack across the front line, the Ukrainian military has been desperately trying to replenish its war-battered forces, embarking on a large-scale mobilization campaign backed by new laws.
While many Ukrainian men have answered the call to serve, some others have tried to evade conscription. Even before the latest mobilization push, thousands of men had fled the country to avoid service, some of them swimming across a river separating Ukraine from Romania. Now, as officers scour the country’s cities to draft men of military age, currently 25 to 60, many people like Vladyslav have gone into hiding, fearful that conscription is a one-way ticket to the front line.
It is not clear how many men are hiding out, but in big cities like Kyiv and Lviv, social media groups alerting members to the movements of draft officers include tens of thousands of members.
Interviews with a dozen men who say they are staying at home to avoid conscription revealed a range of reasons. All expressed fear of dying in a conflict characterized by bloody trench warfare and devastating bombings. Many also said that they opposed conscription because of what they described as harsh draft tactics and a lack of sufficient training.
“I’m afraid I won’t get enough training and then I’ll be moved closer to the front and then I’ll die senselessly,” said Mykyta, a 28-year-old web designer from Lviv, in western Ukraine.
Those fears are backed by some military analysts, who say that Ukrainian troops often lack adequate training, which makes it difficult for Kyiv to hold its lines as they are quickly sent into battle to replace combat losses.
Col. Volodymyr Novosiadlyi, an official responsible for conscription in Kyiv, said that training lasted at least a month and that the army tried to treat draftees with fairness and empathy. But he added that “every citizen should understand the need to fulfill their duties” in defending their country.
Many Ukrainian men have joined the military out of a sense of civic duty. And since a new mobilization law passed in April, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that 1.6 million men had updated or registered their details on a government website, the first step before a possible call-up.
Since the war’s beginning, the draft has been somewhat disorganized and marred by corruption. There was no lottery, and the government used tactics such as randomly handing out draft notices in apartment blocks and on city streets. Ignoring draft notices is illegal.
The new law requires all draft-age men to register with the government, including providing an address, and draftees will be chosen from that group. Failing to register by July 16 will become a criminal offense.
Tymofii Brik, a sociologist at the Kyiv School of Economics, said that polling “suggests the willingness to defend the nation among Ukrainians has remained consistent” throughout the war, with about one-third of people indicating a readiness to serve.
Still, Ukraine’s mobilization drive has opened up painful divisions in society. Vitaliy Bondarenko, a 29-year-old draft officer in Lviv said men scurried away every time his vehicle pulled up.
“They see us and run,” he said.
Many Ukrainian soldiers resent those trying to avoid the draft, saying that their actions weaken their country’s war effort. “Given the intensity of the current combat, the army cannot fight without regular replenishment of personnel,” said another Mykyta, 25, who was recently drafted and gave only his first name per military rules. Denying that reality, he added, “is unacceptable and simply stupid.”
For much of the war’s first two years, the Ukrainian military refrained from large-scale mobilization, relying instead on the tens of thousands of volunteers who joined its ranks after Russia invaded in February 2022.
But by the end of last summer, the need for more soldiers became evident, after a counteroffensive by Ukraine failed and Russian troops stepped up their attacks.
“That’s when the first red flags appeared,” said Vladyslav, who is a journalist. In September, he said, a draft notice was pinned to his apartment door.
Vladyslav ignored it, hoping it was not legally binding because it was not handed to him, but his fear of being drafted increased. He said he had fallen into depression. In a recent interview in a park outside his apartment, he shuddered as a soldier walked by.
Oleksandr, a 32-year-old data analyst from Kyiv, said he “started to feel afraid last summer,” after seeing officers stopping a man outside a subway station near his home. “They grabbed him by the shoulders and took him into a car,” he said, adding that the officers had lined up along the station’s exit stairs to prevent anyone from escaping.
“I felt like the next hand was going to grab my shoulder,” he said.
Some of the men evading the draft say that they now only travel by taxi to avoid being pulled off the streets and forcibly taken to conscription centers, as has happened in several cases. Others rely on food deliveries to elude draft officers.
Oleksandr said he had started assessing which routes were the safest to go to work and monitored groups on the Telegram messaging app where people track draft officers’ movements. In Kyiv, a group with more than 200,000 members uses colors like green to signal the presence of draft officers and warns of the risk of being stopped as sunny, cloudy and stormy.
“But after two weeks, all the routes I could take became unsafe,” Oleksandr said. He recalled being unable to sleep. “The fear built up over time, growing like a lump in my chest,” he said. He now works from home nearly every day.
Vladyslav, Mykyta and Oleksandr all said that they donated to the Ukrainian armed forces and were not completely opposed to joining the army.
They say their main objection is Ukraine’s mobilization process, which they feel pays little attention to people’s physical abilities and skills, and just sends them to a likely death. Medical checks are often rushed, they said, and training is not long enough.
Jack Watling, a military expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London, said that most Ukrainian soldiers were lucky if they got five weeks of training. By contrast, Britain trained infantry soldiers for about 22 weeks during World War II, he said.
Colonel Novosiadlyi noted that conscription officers, who are often war veterans, have a difficult job because of the hostility they face on the streets.
They are mobilizing people “not because they like it,” he said, but because they understand the urgent need to replenish troops.
Still, people have watched with concern as Ukraine steps up its mobilization efforts, including tightening border patrols to catch those trying to flee the country.
Andrii, another 28-year-old web designer from Lviv, described himself as “a bit paranoid.” He goes days without leaving his apartment, relying on a friend to deliver him food. On the rare occasions when he leaves home, he wears an electronic bracelet with a red SOS button that, when pressed, sends his location to relatives.
Andrii said that if he is caught, he will push the button so they can find out which recruitment center he is being taken to and try to help him.
Oleksandr, the data analyst, said that he didn’t want to break the law and would ultimately go online to update his details, after which he expects to be called for a medical examination. He has pinned his hopes on being declared unfit because of his slender physique.
But, he says, “It feels like a lottery.”