MOSCOW, July 28. /TASS/. Ukraine’s border patrol has interdicted illegal border crossing attempts by about 20,000 draft-age men seeking to leave the country since February 2022, a representative of the Ukrainian State Border Service disclosed.

"Our inspectors thwarted more than 6,000 attempts by citizens attempting to pass through border checkpoints with forged documents, and on the 'green territory' of the border, that is, outside of the checkpoints, about 13,500 people were detained for trying to cross the state border [illegally] on foot," Andrey Demchenko said during a Rada TV broadcast in response to a question about the number of draft-age men who had tried to surreptitiously leave Ukraine.

Demchenko added that, on average, about 20 people are detained every day for trying to cross the Ukrainian border illegally.

Ukraine is currently under martial law, and men between the ages of 18 and 60 are prohibited from traveling abroad. However, there are exceptions, including members of parliament and government ministers, who are allowed to leave the country, especially for business purposes. On July 27, amid a scandal sparked by the discovery that Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) member Yury Aristov was vacationing in the Maldives, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that lawmakers and officials’ foreign travel plans and itineraries should be verified down "to the second."