Since start of war, almost 20,000 men have fled Ukraine to avoid conscription, - BBC
This is reported by Censor.NET with reference to the BBC.
"Nearly 20,000 men have fled Ukraine since the start of the war to avoid conscription, it has emerged. Some swam dangerous rivers to leave the country. Others simply walked at night," the article says.
It is noted that another 21,113 men tried to escape but were detained by the Ukrainian authorities.
According to the BBC, dozens of men left every day, despite the authorities' ban.
The publication sent requests to the authorities of Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.
The BBC found, by requesting data on illegal border crossings in these countries, that 19,740 men crossed the border illegally between February 2022 and 31 August 2023.
It is noted that 21,113 people were caught trying to escape. Most of them (14,313) attempted to cross the border on foot or by swimming, while the remaining 6,800 relied on fraudulently obtained official documents showing false exemptions from the draft, such as fabricated illnesses.
Among those who are not eligible for the draft are men with medical problems, those with childcare responsibilities, as well as parents of three or more children, the publication adds.
The president's representative in the Verkhovna Rada, the "servant of the people" Fyodor Venislavsky noted in a BBC commentary that the number of men who left or tried to leave "does not have any influence on the hostilities."
"I am convinced that the stability and readiness of Ukrainians to defend their independence, sovereignty, and freedom is 95-99%. Those who try to avoid mobilization are about 1-5%.
They are definitely not critically important for the defense of Ukraine," he noted, adding that there are no plans to radically increase the number of those subject to mobilization.
Venislavsky stressed that the threat posed by fake documents - and the difficulty in some cases of obtaining genuine documents, which is taken seriously by border guards - should be eradicated within the next one to two years with the help of a new digital system.