An estimated 2,100 Ukrainian officials have attempted to leave the country illegally this year, the spokesman for the national border guard service, Andrey Demchenko, told the TSN news outlet on Friday.
The statistic was revealed in response to a direct request by the outlet regarding draft dodging. Demchenko said there had been a slight decrease in attempts to use fake documents to cross the border at checkpoints, possibly because obtaining forgeries had become more difficult. He added, however, that there had been an increase in attempts to cross the frontier away from official checkpoints.
On Tuesday, Ukraine's successor to the KGB, the SBU, reported that it had busted three new schemes for mobilization avoidance through the falsification of documents in various parts of the country.
Two of the operations allegedly involved corrupt officials helping clients escape conscription, while in two cases forgeries were specifically intended to provide cover for leaving Ukraine, according to the agency. The SBU said people had paid between $1,000 and $8,000 for the illegal services.
Kiev is reportedly planning to ramp up mobilization efforts after sustaining significant casualties on the front line throughout the summer during attempts to reclaim territory from Russia. MP Sergey Rakhmanin, who sits on the parliamentary Committee for Security, Defense, and Intelligence, described numerous problems with the draft in an extensive interview with the national media on Wednesday.
The lawmaker claimed that Ukraine’s armed forces were currently not strong enough to allow frontline units to properly rotate troops. He also cast doubt on the government’s attempts to tackle corruption and abuse among draft officials through their blanket replacement, including by frontline officers.
“Snatching the commander of a battalion or a brigade and putting him in charge of the draft office – that results in an underperforming battalion or brigade, because you need to replace him. And the draft office will not just start enrolling 120% of the quota without violating people’s rights,” Rakhmanin argued.
The violations he was referring to involve officials using force to hunt down recruits, which has plagued the Ukrainian mobilization campaign.