BERLIN, December 21. /TASS/. The Kiev regime intends to call up those Ukrainian citizens who have fled abroad for service in the country’s military, which has been hemorrhaging personnel at a rapid rate during its failed counteroffensive.

"We are still discussing what will happen if they do not voluntarily come to the draft centers," Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told Germany’s Bild newspaper.

"We have in mind Ukrainians aged 25 to 60 who have moved to Germany and other countries. To begin with, the authorities will ask them to notify the Ukrainian army’s mobilization centers of their whereabouts."

Umerov vowed that in the future recruits would begin to be informed in advance about what kind of training they would get, how they will be armed, and where and when they will serve. He remarked that instituting fair rules for recruiting servicemen was important.

According to Bild, since February 2022, 221,571 men aged 18 to 60 have arrived in Germany from Ukraine. To date, 189,484 of them remain in Germany.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told a news conference on Tuesday that the military had suggested mobilizing an additional 450,000-500,000 men, as well as women. He speculated that such mobilization would cost the strapped Ukrainian budget an extra $13.4 bln. In February 2022, Ukraine announced a general mobilization and has repeatedly extended it since. The authorities have been doing everything possible to prevent men of conscription age from dodging the draft. In particular, potential conscripts are banned from traveling abroad. Conscription orders are issued at public administration offices on the streets and many other sites where large numbers of people congregate. Ukrainian media outlets report that many men literally avoid stepping outside their homes for months on end to avoid being forcibly mobilized by mobile conscription squads and sent to the war zone.

Ukraine’s aggressive mobilization campaign has already sparked numerous scandals. The media regularly publish stories of military mobilization officers using force against citizens when handing out conscription orders, or conscripting people unfit for service for health reasons, as well as many instances of lawmakers and civil servants abusing their authority to surreptitiously secrete their conscription age sons to locations abroad, out of reach of Kiev’s mobilization squads. On August 23, Zelensky said that the military had asked him to step up mobilization activities.