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Ukraine stops 1,245 attempts by conscripts to flee country so far this year, data show

Since the start of 2025, 711 charges have been brought in these cases, and convictions have been handed down in 136 cases

MOSCOW, May 30. /TASS/. The number of cases when military conscripts tried to flee Ukraine reached 1,245 this year through April 30, according to police data compiled by TASS.

That breaks down to an average of 311 cases per month, or almost 50% more than a year earlier, when the number averaged 230 per month.

In all of 2024, the police registered 2,758 cases.

Since the start of 2025, 711 charges have been brought in these cases, and convictions have been handed down in 136 cases.

In all of 2024, charges were brought in 1,920 such cases, with sentences handed down in 334 cases.

The statistics reflect the cases that law enforcement agencies handled after apprehending groups of people as they attempted to cross the border, or discovering the bodies of people that died in such attempts.

Ukraine introduced martial law and general military mobilization on February 24, 2022, extending them several times since then. Currently, men from 25 to 60 years of age are subject to mobilization in Ukraine. That is after the minimum age for mobilization was lowered from 27 years starting from April 2024.

A law went into effect on May 18, 2024 to tighten mobilization rules. Videos of forced mobilization surface on social networks almost daily, showing military enlistment officers grabbing men on the streets, in cafes, gyms and other public places. Occasionally, beatings of people in military enlistment offices come to light.

As mobilization-age men seek to avoid ending up at the battlefield, they try to flee the country in a variety of ways, sometimes at a risk to their lives, or purchase certificates purporting to identify them as physically disabled.