Ukrainian authorities estimate that as many as 1.2 million men have fled the country illegally since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022, MP Anna Skorokhod has said.
The lawmaker cited internal statistics in an interview with journalist Lana Shevchuk on Thursday. In addition to draft dodgers, roughly 8 million Ukrainian citizens have left the country legally, she said. Another 2 million resided outside Ukraine before the conflict escalated, Skorokhod added.
The MP did not specify whether she was including Ukrainian citizens who have fled to Russia and Belarus rather than Western countries. She offered the numbers when discussing possible elections in Ukraine and how the government could engage voters living abroad.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has suspended elections in the country citing martial law and remains in power despite his presidential term expiring in May.
In mid-November, Zelensky announced the imminent creation of a National Unity Ministry. The new department is superseding a previous one tasked with returning “temporarily occupied territories” – the former parts of Ukraine that joined Russia over the past decade.
Earlier this week, the parliament approved Aleksey Chernishov as the first unity minister. The official previously served as the chair of state-owned energy giant Naftogaz.
Interviewer Shevchuk joked that the new ministry’s shorthand name, ‘minyed’, sounded close to ‘fellatio’ in Ukrainian, prompting Skorokhod to share her thoughts about its purpose. The MP believes that Zelensky is preparing for an end to the armed conflict with Russia and a presidential election. The new ministry will need to establish where Ukrainian citizens currently reside and engage them on behalf of Kiev, she explained.
That theory explains the situation better than Zelensky, who touted the new ministry as part of his “resilience plan,” the MP claimed.
“[Zelensky] used many big words in his speech before the parliament, and for each one, you could invent a ministry,” she said. “Chat GPT could have written a better plan.”
Last week, the Ukrainian media reported on a recent opinion poll which suggested that just 16% of Ukrainian voters would back Zelensky in a hypothetical presidential election, compared to 27% who would prefer the country’s former top general, Valery Zaluzhny.
Draft avoidance has been a major obstacle to Kiev’s plans to bolster the military through mandatory conscription, following an overhaul of the military service system earlier this year.