By Alex Miller, The New Worker
(Weekly newspaper of the New Communist Party of Britain)

In the photo, men of military age were caught at the border while attempting to escape from Ukraine.

Large-scale military defeats, a high number of losses, an acute shortage of weapons, the complete absence of social benefits. These days most Ukrainians have lost their patriotic zeal. Guided by a common instinct of self-preservation and fear of serious injury or unwanted death they are not ready to sacrifice themselves.

The new Ukrainian law on military mobilization further aggravates the situation with conscription into the army. Numerous attempts by the government to straighten out the mobilisation process have generally failed. Territorial Recruiting Centres (known as TCK) cannot meet the government’s recruitment needs.

According to the Belgian newspaper Politico, more than 650,000 Ukrainian men fit for service have fled from thecountry. The actual statistical figures, however, are much higher.

The London Guardianon 29th June 2024 reported persistent attempts by Ukrainians liable for military service to escape and leave Ukraine in order toavoid conscription. The publisher cited legal inconsistencies and a ban onleaving Ukraine for all menbetween 25 and 60 years old, and said thousands of men are fleeing Ukraine by crossing the border illegally. These men do not want to share the tragic fate of hundreds of thousands of their compatriots who died on the battlefield or were seriously injured.

According to the Commander-in-Chief of theBorder Guards of Ukraine–Matveychuk – “everyday more than 100 men ofmilitary age try to illegallycross the border to getinto Western Europe“. Atthe same time, reservistswho stay behind are doing all sorts of things to avoid being recalled to the armed forces. They illegally ignore military registrationand enlistment offices and document checks. They steer clear of public places (such as retail stores,shops, markets and cultural events), avoid open movement on the streets and hide their location and change their addresses to avoidofficial employment.

The American publishing house Bloomberg reports that many men have changed their actual place of residence and it is impossible to find them. Only half of the 4.5 million relocated men were officially registered for achange of address.

Since the beginning ofthe military conflict, the TCK call-up centres have filed more than 180,000 administrative reports for violation of military registration, and also submitted more than 400,000 requests to regional police departments to search for military service evaders.

At the same time, the failure of the mobilisation campaign in Ukraine has led to an acute shortage of military personnel,which daily increases the risk of the front collapsing along the line from the cityof Kherson to the city of Kharkov.

The French radio station Europe 1, citing the source in the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reported that the personnel shortage in the Ukrainian army exceeded 40 per cent of the actual figures of the officially stated need.

The top commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not hide the bleak picture and in their belligerent statements they are trying to encourage the political leadership urgently to change the situation. General YuriSodol, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in a speech in the UkrainianParliament (VerkhovnaRada), raised the issue of more than 10-fold numerical superiority of Russian personnel over the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Finding itself in a desperate situation, the Kiev regime is forced to fill the acute personnel shortage by starting the total mobilisation of all men previously exempted from conscription, including those with foreign anddual citizenship. Now the TCK enlistment centres have started a man-hunt for more than 100,000 menof military age with dual citizenship and passports of other countries, permanently or temporarily residing on the territory of Ukraine.

The Israeli Embassy in Kiev reported an increasein the number of cases of detention of people with dual citizenship attempting to leave Ukraine. Tel-Avivhas officially recommended that Israelis holding dual Ukrainian citizenship avoid travelling to Ukraine.

A similar message was distributed by the US diplomatic mission in Ukraine. In a statement, the US diplomatic agency said that as of 1st June 2024, the official moratorium on the mobilisation of residents who have lived outside Ukraine for a long time and have passports of another citizenship has been terminated while emphasising that Washington is limited in its ability to change Ukrainian legislation that regulates military status and mobilisation process in Ukraine.

In addition, on 5th June2024 Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, announced, that the government of Ukraineis calling up members of the Hungarian community who have dual Ukrainian and Hungarian citizenship. Now “Hungary is the only European country whose citizens officially serve in the Ukrainian army and diein war” he said.