Why are men fleeing Ukraine and the war? | Front Burner

Hi I’m Damon Fess do you feel guilty at all for leaving no I don’t feel guilty I’ve saved my life I don’t want to come home in a coffin or in a wheelchair this is CBC correspondent Brier Stewart she’s speaking with a man named Vladimir he’s from Ukraine but

He’s now in neighboring mdova Vladimir and the Manny with Sergey both ran through the cold and mud for hours last month crossing the border illegally they’ asked that we only use their first names every man uh need to have a choice you know because if you want to go into

War um defend your country okay it’s your choice what do you think of the fact that Ukraine says it needs more soil soldiers or it could lose uh in everywhere I lose uh everybody since Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago it’s been illegal for most men to leave

But as the war is dragged on over 15,000 Ukrainian men have crossed illegally into neighboring Moldova it’s an exodus that continues even as Ukraine’s military says it needs hundreds of thousands more Fighters for a stagnant war effort that’s facing wavering support from allies so how are thousands of men

Managing to leave the country why do they refuse to fight and what could it signal about ukrainians attitudes towards a new phase of this war my colleague Brier Stewart recently went to mdova to find answers and she joins me now from London hey hey rer thanks for coming up

Front prin I really appreciate it absolutely okay so let’s start with a a little bit of a geography lesson here can you tell me more about mdova I I understand it’s right next to Ukraine but but why is it an obvious place to go if you were interested in leaving

Ukraine right well it’s obvious because it borders Ukraine on three sides basically in the North in the East and in the South and it is a very large border 1,200 kilometers and and to give you a sense of of the geography around it in the north you have men Crossing

There it’s a little bit more challenging in some areas because you have the denista River on the Eastern side some of it’s a challenge too because you have these Russian back separatist region of trans nista and in the South that is where we were uh in the border and

That’s where you have a lot of men cross for one it’s its proximity to a major city in Ukraine it’s about 60 kilometers or so from Odessa and it is very remote and at this time of year you have a lot of barren Farm Fields a lot of Muddy

Roads and not a lot of villages in between so it’s kind of the remoteness that men take advantage of if you will uh as they try to get out under the cover of Darkness you went on a a ride along with the movan border patrol basically looking for these guys so so

Can you tell me about that like what’s the process what how are they looking for ukrainians crossing the border right so they’re basically out 24 hours a day in different teams and the guys that we were with were watching an area of about 30 kilm and they’re using equipment uh a

Lot of it which was obtained in the fall was given to them by countries including Germany uh Germany had given them some drones and basically what they’re doing is they’re using these drones and thermal imaging equipment to scan the landscape and you know they they see animals they see you know any anything

That is moving anything that is of a higher temperature and they see an awful lot of men probably we now we can find such people because in Ukraine exist a war situation and we every night every day um can find such illegal migrants when we were there we went out with them

Overnight actually I think we actually drove out with them around 2:00 a.m. in the morning and what the Drone operator uh who I was speaking to his name is Vladimir kurov he’s 24 years old and he’d been kind of doing this role since September and he said he will frequently

See men in Ukraine approaching the border so he’ll see them on his screen on his remote control for the Drone even before they cross and that’s when he starts to kind of notify the rest of his team Fe approaching to the Border I understand that in 5 minutes 10 minutes

We he probably will uh uh in enter in our territory so you can see him even before he leaves Ukraine and when I observe this person when he entered on our territory uh I save uh my partner uh to drive uh car 20 25 minutes the um immigrant is uh arrested that

Being said he said there’s a few occasions to and he’s seen the man and he’s flying his drone in the air and in fact they’ve turned around because he thinks they’ they’ve heard the buzzing uh they you know fearful so they’re using the drones they’re also using kind of large mobile

Trucks with thermal imaging equipment and then you have I guess old-fashioned uh checkpoint set up uh when we were there it was again early in the morning around 6:00 a.m. that they had stopped a vehicle and in that vehicle uh were four Ukrainian men and a local from mdova who

They had paid to help them cross the border and so that’s also kind of the the work that they’re doing to survey the area this is obviously happening with a lot of frequency C can you give me a sense of what the police told you about how

Often uh people are trying to cross the border yes well very often I mean they had said since the start of the war so February 24th 2022 uh 15,000 men have crossed illegally and so it’s been almost two years so if you do the math it’s about 20 men entering illegally a

Day the Detachment that we were with they’re not seeing men every day per se but they are saying they cross most often on the weekend they will see them come in in groups uh of four or five or in pairs and and really what they do is

You know they would get dropped off somewhere on the Ukrainian side and they would walk they would walk for hours often in very frigid conditions carrying you know just a backpack with a passport a couple of the men that we have spoken to carryed a change of clothes and some

Toiletries each of them saying that we are uh running from war and we want to uh get uh Pro protect mavian protect on our territory and then when they cross over what happens is it it really depends on whether or not they are spotted by the

Border guards right away and if they are then they are detained uh questioned briefly sometimes they’re questioned a little bit longer if they have paid somebody to help them get across but after that they are essentially released and they have to go to the IM migration Center to claim Asylum and once they’re

There they are fingerprinted and and photographed and and all that information goes into a database for the migration officials in malova and what they say is that they really have to um convince the men that they’re then not going to turn that information over to the Ukrainian authorities and and they

Don’t I mean Moldova says it’s not something they could do it’s part of international law these these men are claiming Asylum they’re protected at that point and uh the vast majority of these men who go to mova it is just a Gateway for them their real destination

Or their their main goal is to get to the EU what happens is a lot of them will get the Asylum status they then refuse it they reject it and they move on to the EU U out through Romania but can you help me understand that process a little more like you you

Spoke with men Ukrainian men who are going through this process what do they tell you I mean the process begins uh really months before they make that decision to leave and they have been struggling with this decision for quite a long time as they said you know it’s

Nearly 2 years that this war has been going on and the one gentleman that I spoke to at the um Immigration Center of ital he’s 38 years old he was working at a casino in Odessa and he said he basically had been saving his money during the last year planning to do this

But it was a decision that he agonized over it was difficult I’ve been thinking about it for over a year I didn’t have any questions I just had to decide to leave my country I don’t know how we’re going to get back now but that’s how it is you know it’s

Not just leaving Ukraine for a little while if they were to return at this point they would be prosecuted for not only Crossing illegally but for trying to evade mobilization and that’s a criminal charge because most of these men in Ukraine at the moment between the

Ages of 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country and you have men that are not only trying to ass escape the possibility of being drafted but you have had families that have been separated this whole time you know there’ll be like the the wife and the

Children that are somewhere in the EU in an EU country and they’ve been completely disconnected from from you know the father or the husband or the brother and so you do have men kind of making this journey as well just to try to reate with your family members and my

Understanding is that the only option for men in Ukraine to leave is illegally right yes unless you have an exemption and these exemp are very specific so one of them is if you are a father of more than three children under the age of 18 you would be exempt if you’re like a

Full-time caregiver for somebody with a disability you could also be exempt if you had um a certificate showing that you were medically and fit for military service and so these exemptions you know are not granted widely but what Ukrainian authorities have said is that they’ve seen uh thousands of cases of

Men turning up at the border with what Ukraine says um are fake documents documents that have been forged documents that these men have paid somebody to make and they’ve been stopped from making that journey and I I do think it’s important to point out

Like it is very hard to say you know how many men have left because we don’t know I mean we know that Maldova Romania Slovakia and Hungary say that altogether uh at least 25,000 have crossed there illegally but we don’t know how many of them have gone through without being

Detected without claiming Asylum we also don’t know how many of them may have got through the checkpoints with fake documents or forged documents that the Ukrainian authorities just didn’t uh pick up on I want a little more detail about the how these guys are trying to cross it

You mentioned the area that you were in what was this agricultural area with people are hiking across the border what what are the the ways the guys are trying to cross into mova right well they’re they’re they’re hiking as I said sometimes they’re paying people to smuggle them across and whether that

Means actually physically leading them across the border or taking them right up to the point where they cross on their own or in the north people are actually swimming across the river or they’re paying people to take them over in inflatable rafts and you know videos have been released uh from the Ukrainian

Authorities of of men trying to cross through Romania through Slovakia and what Ukrainian authorities say is that 19 men have died uh crossing the Tissa river which flows between Romania and Ukraine and on another occasion they had found a man who was uh wandering around in the snowy mountains in Western

Ukraine for two days he was lost and what had happened was he wasn’t sure whether or not he had made it into Romania yet so he had called the authorities to to him to rescue him because he was lost and what happened was it was the Ukrainian border guards

Who had responded uh so after walking around for 2 days he’d never did make it out of Ukraine so yeah we’ve been talking about the operation on the mulvin side of the Border here but but with it being illegal for most Ukrainian men to cross it what’s Ukraine doing to

Stop them well what you see is from the state Border guard service of Ukraine they’re very active online they have a Facebook account a YouTube channel they’re posting I would say almost daily video and photos of men that they have stopped frequently they have the men

Often in a group you know five or six men kind of lined up beside each other they have their faces blurred uh but they’re under detention and they also post people that they’ve stopped with fake documents people that have been um caught trying to offer a bribe to uh

Border guards at the checkpoints and I think we see all of this because they are really trying to show that there’s a very good chance that they will get caught and Ukraine says since this has has started it’s caught more than 18,000 men trying to sneak out essentially and

Then about two weeks ago we came across a video that The Border guard service had posted on YouTube and it was I think it was 13 minutes long and it was kind of like a highly produced uh information segment like you might see it you might

Even think oh this looks a little bit like a a newscast or or or who’s behind this and what it is it was the state Border guard service and it had this very ominous music it talked about the number who had died Crossing the the river um between Romania and Ukraine and

And I think the host at one point said something to the effective you know people who try to escape uh can die while their peers remain in Ukraine uh to fight with with weapons in their hand so you kind of see see the messaging uh that they’re trying to get at not only

Perhaps trying to scaring men into staying put but also making them think just about you know leaving their country at a time of War one of the things you reported on is is on on the platform telegram finding discussion groups about how guys can get

Out of Ukraine what did you find on on telegram can you tell me about that what are they discussing there yeah you certainly do not have to look very hard to find them because they’re everywhere and telegram is very popular uh in Ukraine as it is in Russia it’s a

Messaging platform and there’s just a number of users that advertise very openly the services that they’re offering to help arrange uh Transportation or other options to get men out of Ukraine so I connected with a few of them and you know asked them how much it would cost for for a man to

Leave Odessa then they they would quote me prices so to leave Odessa it was €3,000 which is over 4,000 Canadian there were also individuals on there who were saying for the equivalent of 6,000 Canadian they would make up a disability certificate uh which would be authentic

Enough for the Border guards to buy it and the and the man would be able to leave legally through the the checkpoint um but basically all of those you know accounts are out there advertising and I think that’s why the fact that they’re they’re there and the fact that Ukraine

Has said that they’ve you know seen thousands of these fake documents at the checkpoints just gives you a sense of of I guess the demand for it remember when the when the war first broke out the sense I got was that you know people were staying voluntarily you know to

Defend the country it seems like as the war’s dragged on there’s been this increasing pressure from Ukraine for men to stay or join the the fight so there’s been a shift right there has and absolutely in the beginning I mean we saw scenes of crowds rushing to enlist

People you know signing up for the weapons that they were handing out because people they were eager to defend their country two years on I think the harsh horrific realities of War has set in I mean you’ve had people who signed up in those initial days to fight on the

Front line still fighting on the front line and so people are tired families are tired in fact you’ve had you know there’s been two or three protests in Ukraine which is actually quite something because protests are also uh not allowed under under the martial law

Which is in place right now but you have family members that stand in the street with signs saying you know demobilize my dad you know he’s been gone for 300 days or something like that so you’ve written about how Ukraine’s counter offensive really hasn’t made many gains in the

Last year and there’s there’s a you know kind of broad concerns that hit a stalemate I guess I’m curious in your conversations with Ukrainian men what can doubts did you hear about whether it makes sense for them to fight and sacrifice their lives I think they feel disheartened and they also feel like

This war that they have you know been able to kind of be on the sidelines for for the most part uh is about to really hit home this has been going on now for two years and Ukraine is talking about trying to mobilize more men uh potentially hundreds of thousands of

More men and so these guys who thought that they were maybe could Escape the draft that the war would you know wrap up before now are thinking that they could get swept up into it and you know two of the um three men that I spoke

With were living in the Odessa area and Odessa is a place where it does occasionally get hit by missiles but it it is far from the front line but things have changed things have changed over recent months and you have videos circulating on social media uh showing recruitment officers drafting people at

Gyms at malls uh there was even a video of um recruitment officers at a a ski resort and I think people are hearing uh anecdotally from friends from acquaintances about people they know being drafted and eventually being sent to the front line sometimes with you know maybe a few weeks of training and

The one gentleman that I spoke to who would only let us identify him by his first name Vladimir he said that he was taking a securious route to work because he didn’t want to have to walk by the draft office like he would change his his patterns as you walk down the street

They can safely take you throw you into a car take you to the military registration and enlistment office and send you to serve well I don’t want to kill anyone I want to live in peace you know there are stories of people hiding out not spending a lot of

Time out in public because they just don’t want to to run into a to a conscription officer and I think there just is a real there’s a sense of exhaustion and I think that was really uh apparent throughout all the conversations I think we’re expecting it to be a hard

Year for Ukraine just thinking about the difficulty getting support and funding for Weaponry in the US especially you know with that in mind what are ukrainians what are movans expecting in terms of this phenomenon like this isn’t going to stop anytime soon no and in fact uh the officials in mova say that

They are seeing more and more men and they expect that number to increase as you know the conversations and the the mobilization campaign does and and mobilization has never stopped in Ukraine since the beginning of the war but what you have happening now is this very public discussion about mobilizing

As many as half a million more soldiers and it is a very divisive issue it’s dividing you know Ukraine’s politicians you have president viadimir zalinski who says that he doesn’t he doesn’t think it’s possible he doesn’t think it’s feasible uh not even you know financially possible for Ukraine to do

That but you have his his top General uh who says that Ukraine needs this number of people on the front line to be able to seize momentum and push Russia back from these uh occupied territories and so it is um a very divisive issue and

And as this is going on the you’ve had the Parliament and lawmakers working on this mobilization bill and the point of this bill is to try to you know broaden the reach of mobilization and also punish man those who’ve tried to evade service and so one of the things they’re

Looking at doing is lowering the age of conscription from 27 to 25 so the right now the earliest the you know people under 27 can’t be drafted into the military but if you’re 18 and up you can voluntarily enlist um so they’re looking at changing that and they’re also

Looking at putting more punishments in place for those who tried to dodge the draft allowing the courts to freeze assets and not letting people apply for licenses Drive vles that kind of thing and as I said it is a really contentious issue that that is even dividing

Lawmakers so you know we’ve been talking obviously about people who are trying to leave who’ve decided that it isn’t worth risking their lives to stay in fight you you also spoke with some guys who you know are grappling with the same fears but they’ve they’ve decided to stay in

Ukraine I guess I’m curious what they told you yeah and I think that’s important context because when we’re talking about these numbers of men fleeing I mean 25,000 sounds like a lot but obviously it it pairs in comparison to the number of men who are still in

The country and I connected with a young man named demitro uh chensi and he’s a political scientist living in Western Ukraine in fact in a city that’s not far from the Romanian border and he was interesting because he was actually out of the country in the initial weeks of

The invasion he was in Hungary taking part in a um election observation Mission and he said that he had a lot of his friends tell him don’t come back stay away uh you have this kind of ticket now you’re outside of the country stay there um and he decided to come

Back and he registered at the military registration office which men are required to do and he basically says that he could be conscripted at any time he knows that but he’s kind of made peace with it just because he doesn’t think Ukraine has any other kind of

Option what what do you expect that we have such a massive Invasion and Ukraine like no martial law no no look it’s it’s not a movie it’s not the Hollywood stop basically he says if it’s not martial law if if the government doesn’t compel men because that’s who we’re talking

About here men to stay and fight for the country who’s going to this is the reality we live in yes you prepare yourself you know every day right now you know mentally I’m more or less okay so I will be drafted this is this is the life it is

What it is yeah and so that was the point that he really wanted to to impart and he said of course he’s scared uh any anyone would be scared to go to the the front line and fight but he said that doesn’t mean that all the men in Ukraine

Are are thinking of packing up and heading out Bri it’s really amazing reporting you’ve done I really appreciate you coming on and uh telling me about it absolutely you’re welcome all right that’s it for today I’m Damon Fairless thanks for listening to Front Burner I’ll talk to you tomorrow

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion nearly two years ago, it’s been illegal for most men to leave Ukraine. So why do thousands risk crossing the border into neighbouring Moldova?

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