As the Russia War Continues, Ukraine Faces a Major Draft Evasion Problem

Draft officers picked Ivan up at a traffic stop and dropped him off at a training base, but he went absent without leave from the army after three days. Since then, he has been hiding at home in Vylkove, a small town in southernmost Ukraine, rarely stepping outside.

Almost four years after the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukraine faces the twin challenges of not having enough troops and men avoiding military service. Many men of draft age, 25 to 60, have broken the law that prohibits most of them from leaving the country, while others play a cat-and-mouse game with conscription officers or just hunker down at home.

The unique geography and history of Vylkove, a run-down Danube River fishing port, have made it an exaggerated version of Ukraine in miniature, where draft-age men have all but vanished.

“Who’s left?” asked Ivan, 42, speaking on the condition that his last name be withheld for his safety. “Women, the elderly and men who try not to go out unnecessarily.”

National identity is not so deeply rooted in this region, which has changed hands repeatedly between countries, and enthusiasm for the war is unusually low here, though plenty of men have gone to fight.

Romania beckons, visible just across the Danube, and Moldova is close by, so escape is unusually enticing. Many men have gone that route, but others have died trying or been caught. Vylkove is hemmed in by rivers, marshes and roadblocks, making flight difficult and dangerous enough to convince men like Ivan that they are better off just hiding, dreading a knock on the door.

The draft dragnet is especially intense along Ukraine’s borders. Vylkove has canals for streets — it is sometimes called, with considerable generosity, the Venice of Ukraine — and border guard boats patrol the waterways.

Men have tried to cross the river to Romania in boats, diving equipment, even homemade rafts of five-liter plastic bottles.

“Even well-prepared people got caught in currents,” and are swept away, said Oleh Mukomela, a major in the border guard service. The service estimates that, nationwide, at least 70 men have drowned or died in the woods and marshes while trying to escape Ukraine.

Just one road leads out of Vylkove, and it has border guard roadblocks. Farther along, the main highway providing access to the rest of the country crosses into Moldova, and then back into Ukraine, passing through border posts. There was another major road, leading to Odesa, until Russian bombardment damaged a bridge on it.

Mariners are permitted to leave Ukraine for work on ships, but many have set sail and not returned. Their wives and children who stayed behind now visit them in neighboring countries between sea voyages.

Ukrainian commanders and military experts say the troop shortage has opened gaps of hundreds of yards between manned frontline positions, enabling Russian advances. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian troops have been killed, wounded or captured, or are missing.

Amid such sacrifice, Ukrainians are generally not sympathetic to those who avoid service. Prosecutors say they have opened 290,000 cases for desertion or for being absent without leave.

But the region once known as Southern Bessarabia, which includes Vylkove, is different. Much of the population is Russian-speaking, descended from “Old Believers” who centuries ago rejected modernizing trends in the Russian Orthodox Church and settled here to escape persecution.

Since 1812, this area has been held by the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Moldavia, Romania, Russia again, Ukraine, Germany, Romania again, the Soviet Union, Romania a third time, the Soviet Union again and then Ukraine again. The shifting national allegiance has left a deep imprint on how residents view the government and their duty to serve, said Volodymyr Poltorak, historian at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

“Any form of authority is met with distrust,” he said. “In a way, they are anarchists.”

Of the nearly 8,000 residents of Vylkove when the full-scale war began, only about 5,000 remain — though with so many people hiding, estimates are tricky. Everyone knows someone who left.

“I really miss him,” said Halyna Silarina, 55, of a sailor friend who left when the war started.

“The world has shrunk completely,” said one male resident who is nearly 60 but still draft-eligible. He requested anonymity to avoid being caught. About half the remaining men of draft age do not leave their houses at all, he said.

As to feeling trapped, he said it was important not to dwell on it. He busied himself this year by picking the figs from his tree as they ripened each day, and made fig jam, he said.

With men missing, women adopted traditionally male jobs, including fishing, a mainstay of the town’s economy. From around 700 fishermen, Vylkove is down to only 70, most of them older than 60, according to the mayor, Matviy Ivanov.

At the city hall, Mr. Ivanov said, all the other employees are women. “I’m the only man left.” Or, at least, the only one visible.

“It’s women everywhere” in town now, he said. “They enjoy it, they’ve taken over every sector, and now they’re in charge.”

Two sisters, Antonina Bilovolenko, 67, and Klavdiia Moskvichova, 63, are delighted to have become employees of a fishing company, even if it is hard work.

They always loved fishing but before the war they couldn’t get jobs doing it, so they mostly tended gardens instead. But with labor in short supply, companies have become more open to hiring women. Every day now, they put on warm clothes, prepare their nets, and sail out to catch fish.

“We love it, love it above all jobs,” Ms. Moskvichova said.

Ms. Bilovolenko added, “You go out on the water and forget everything, the what and the how.”

Their brother, Anatoliy Unharov, 66, used to work for the same company and envies his sisters still being out on the water. “Not all men can match them when it comes to fishing,” he said.

For other women, the changes are more a burden than an opportunity.

Olha, 50, said she struggled with the physical labor she does for a company that harvests reeds for export. Her husband was detained by draft officers and put into the army, she said, so she took over his job. She declined to give her surname, fearing it could help expose men in hiding.

The work was hard, she said, adding that her husband used to do it.

War has hit the area’s tourism business hard. One local company, Pelican, which plays on the Venice parallel, had 50 employees before the war. Now there are 20, mainly women and older people, said the owner, Mykhailo Zhmud, who at 66 is too old to draft.

His mechanic is now hiding at home, he said. “When I call and ask him to look at the boat, he says, ‘Let me first check if there are draft officers in town.’”

Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.