The Ukrainian government cancels consular services for men of military age

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government has suspended all consular services for men of military age in a desperate bid to force some of the reportedly 4.5 million Ukrainian men living abroad back home to fight in more than two year-long NATO proxy war against Russia.

Guards of honor carry the coffin of a Ukrainian soldier during his funeral service on Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, December 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeni Maloletka)

On Monday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter/X that he had “ordered measures to restore fair attitudes towards men of draft age in Ukraine and abroad.” At the same time, Ukrainian consulates across Europe began canceling services for men of military age, according to the Ukrainian News Channel Suspilne.

Announcing the measure, Kuleba criticized Ukrainians who fled rather than be sent to the front lines. “What it looks like now: a man of draft age went abroad, showed his state that he doesn’t care about its survival, and then comes and wants to receive services from this state,” Kuleba said.

“It doesn’t work this way. Our country is at war. A stay abroad does not relieve a citizen of his or her duties towards the home country.”

Ukrainian men of fighting age abroad will now be forced to return to Ukraine to renew their passports, where they will then be subjected to forced conscription and mobilization. Those who do not return to the country will be punished with the loss of their passports and driver’s licenses, effectively becoming stateless citizens living abroad illegally.

The announcement follows last week’s passage of a mobilization bill that was originally introduced in February and amended more than 4,000 times.

The 2024 mobilization drive was first proposed in Zelensky’s year-end speech in December, when he announced that the Ukrainian Armed Forces hoped to mobilize 500,000 new soldiers at a cost of $13.3 billion. After widespread opposition, an initial mobilization bill was withdrawn and then reintroduced in February, ultimately leading to the bill’s passage.

Now that the bill is passed, all men between the ages of 18 and 60 will have to update their personal details with the authorities responsible for conscription within the next 60 days. This requirement also applies to Ukrainian men living abroad. The new law will make it easier for the Ukrainian authorities to issue draft notices, including through an electronic system. It also obliges local authorities and police to assist the military in conscription.

The final version of the adopted bill does not contain a provision for the demobilization of men after three years of service and was removed at the last minute at the request of the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrsky. Since the fall, the wives and families of soldiers who have, in many cases, been fighting at the front for more than two years, have been protesting in major Ukrainian cities to demand that their husbands, fathers and brothers be allowed to return home.

Faced with serious shortages of manpower and ammunition and steadily losing ground on the front, the adoption of the bill and the inclusion of punitive measures against conscription evaders is a tacit admission by the right-wing Zelensky government that, despite constant nationalist propaganda, Ukrainian men are not exactly more eager to volunteer for NATO’s proxy war than ever.

BBC Ukraine reported in November that 650,000 Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 60 have left Ukraine for Europe since the start of the war, while Zelensky’s former adviser Alexey Arestovich recently claimed that 4.5 million Ukrainian men, almost half of Ukraine’s male population had fled abroad. to avoid military service, and that 30 to 70 percent of military units consist of ‘refuseniks’, who have left without official leave (AWOL).

Following the announcement of the proposal, Ukrainians across Europe lined up at consular offices to renew their passports before the mobilization changes took effect. In Valencia, Spain, 550 people reportedly queued for hours to renew their passports and guarantee their legal status in Spain for the coming year.

Earlier this week, Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian State Border Service, reported that 10 military-age men a day are trying to leave the country using forged documents. Demchenko also reported that attempts to bribe border guards are common and that border guards are now stationed across Ukraine’s borders to stop conscription evaders.

Despite its own support for the slaughter in Ukraine, the New York Times recently reported in an article titled “In Western Ukraine, Draft Dodgers Run and Swim to Avoid War” about the desperate situation facing Ukrainian men. The article, which provides a glimpse into the huge numbers of people regularly fleeing Ukraine, reported that Romanian authorities had apprehended 6,000 men swimming across the Tysa River since the start of the full-scale war in February 2022 alone.

Last December, Zelensky and his then-commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny declared that another 500,000 new soldiers were needed to continue the war. That number was subsequently lowered by Syrsky, who claimed that an internal audit conducted by the Department of Defense was “significantly reduced.” Syrsky did not clarify the exact number, instead claiming that “we expect that we will have enough people who can defend.”

According to Russian figures reported this week, the war has already resulted in 500,000 casualties on the Ukrainian side. Meanwhile, the Zelensky government continues to absurdly claim that it has lost only 31,000 troops in more than two years of war, even as it cannot account for the 700,000 soldiers apparently missing from its armed forces. Ukraine had a population of less than 40 million before the war.

Whatever the actual figures, it is clear that the US-backed government in Kiev will remain at a disadvantage against the numerically superior Russian military due to the massive casualties and large numbers of Ukrainians fleeing the war . This is evident from a recent speech in parliament, quoted by the New York Times“The commander of the Ukrainian forces in the east, General Yurii Sodol, said that Russians outnumber Ukrainians by more than seven to one in certain parts of the front.”

Despite the expected passage of a $61 billion relief bill currently passing Congress, weapons still require soldiers to use them, which no amount of aid can magically summon.

As Ukrainian Ground Force Commander Oleksandr Pavliuk recently admitted on Facebook in an effort to recruit more Ukrainians to join the armed forces: “No matter how much aid we get, how many weapons we have, we are short of people.”

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