Ukrainian deserters
“Heroism ends when you see war with your own eyes”
09/01/2023 06:59 p.m
Because of Russia’s war of aggression, Ukrainian men of military age are not allowed to leave the country. Nevertheless, some try to escape military service by fleeing abroad. Many of them are riddled with guilt.
“I saw someone shot in the stomach. He was in excruciating pain. Then I saw a severed head.” Ivan Ishchenko, who had volunteered with the Ukrainian army to fight against Russia, eventually could no longer endure such atrocities. “I didn’t want to see anything anymore.” After a month at the front, the Ukrainian deserted – willing to face a prison sentence or pay thousands of euros to flee his homeland. Now he lives in Germany.
When Russia invaded his country in February last year, the 30-year-old was determined to fight for a free Ukraine. “Before I went to war, I thought I was a superhero,” Ishchenko recalls. “But all heroism ends when you see war with your own eyes and realize you don’t belong here.”
Ishchenko paid $5,000 to flee Ukraine. A car with government license plates took him into a forest near the Hungarian border, he climbed through a hole in the fence and ran. “That was the moment when I was most afraid. When I left Ukraine and fled on foot,” says the deserter.
More than 13,000 people arrested at the border
Like Ishchenko, scores of Ukrainians have fled military service or deserted the army since the Russian attack began. They face up to five or twelve years in prison in their home country. Officially, Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country. Ishchenko is currently in Dresden.
When asked, the Ukrainian authorities did not want to give an estimate of how many men left the country illegally. According to their own statements, the authorities have arrested 13,600 people at the borders since February 2022 who wanted to leave the country outside of the regular crossings. Another 6,100 people were caught with false papers, most of them men of fighting age, border police spokesman Andriy Demchenko said.
Bogdan Marynenko regularly crossed the border into Poland two days before his eighteenth birthday. “When I return, they’ll just send me somewhere where there’s a fire,” he says, looking at the front. “I can’t do anything, they won’t prepare me and they’ll just kill me.”
In Poland, Marynenko works on construction sites, with the money he uses to support his family. His father is at the front in Ukraine. “If something happens to him, my mother and my sisters will only have me,” says the 19-year-old. “If I had no family, I would not have fled.”
Numerous Ukrainians bribe the authorities to travel to the border or to get a fake medical report to avoid the war – like Ivan, who paid $5,000 for such a certificate and who does not want to give his last name. “Everyone knows someone who can help them,” says the 24-year-old.
“I have to take care of my family too”
The Ukrainian government is currently cracking down on corruption in the authorities. All senior conscription officers were recently dismissed and more than 200 recruitment centers raided. According to their own statements, the investigators uncovered “extensive corrupt structures in almost all regions of the country”. President Volodymyr Zelenskyj spoke of “treason”.
Many of the refugees feel guilty. Yevgen Kurusch, 38, who works as a taxi driver in Warsaw, admits: “I know that I have to defend my country, but I also have to take care of my family.” A man of his age stands out in Poland among the women and children who have fled from the Ukraine. Some blame him: “I was told: ‘Our men are at the front, they are fighting, and you, the cowards, stay here. You hide behind their backs, behind the backs of our men’.”
The reserve officer now lives in Warsaw with his wife and children Kirill and Anastasia, aged five and eight. “When I see them, it gives me strength,” says Kurutsch. “It comforts me to know that I’m not doing this for nothing.”