Thousands of men flee Ukraine to avoid forced conscription – NRK Urix – Foreign news and documentaries

– What should I do? asks Evgenij when asked by the British news channel.

He is afraid of being drafted into the war.

– Not everyone is a warrior. You don’t have to keep the entire country on lockdown. You can’t bring everyone together like they did in the Soviet Union.

Yevgenyj is one of about 20,000 Ukrainian men who have fled the country. This depends BBC excavation team.

Swimming across borders

They mapped illegal border crossings from Ukraine from February 2022 to August 2023. The figures were sourced from neighboring countries such as Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia.

Another 21,000 men tried to escape. However, the Ukrainian authorities arrested them, according to the BBC.

According to the channel, many of them are swimming or walking across the border. The assumption is based on the tracks found in the failed escape attempts.

Great need for employment

Ukraine has been at war for nearly two winters. Like Russia, the Ukrainian armed forces are strengthening their defenses.

The status of the army is unknown. The Ukrainians do not have an official figure for losses.

They also did not announce an official figure about the size of the army. But in September, the Minister of Defense said Rustam Umarov The army consists of more than 800 thousand soldiers.

Estimated this summer Americans The number of Ukrainian soldiers killed reached 70,000.

Then 40,000 men constitute a large proportion.

Ukraine has conducted several recruitment campaigns. On October 1, a proposal was put forward to recruit women as well New York times.

Battle of Dnipro

On Sunday, Ukrainian forces are scheduled to succeed in chasing Russian forces away from the Dnipro River.

– Preliminary information ranges between three and eight kilometers depending on the geography and landscape on the left bank of the river.

Defense spokeswoman Natalia Gumenjuk said this to Ukrainian TV.

Dnipro is an important front line in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in southern Ukraine.

The battle for control of the river banks and the town of Avdiivka is the latest regional development in the conflict.

The think tank writes, among other things ISW.

Ukraine now believes it has made significant progress eastward.

However, such operations pose a military challenge. Soldiers crossing the river may lose the opportunity to receive reinforcements or retreat.