– What am I supposed to do? asks Yevgenij when asked by the British news channel. He is afraid of being drafted into the war. – Not everyone is a warrior. You don’t have to keep the whole country locked up. You can’t lump everyone together like they did in the Soviet Union. Yevgenij is one of nearly 20,000 Ukrainian men who have fled the country. That according to the BBC’s excavation team. Swimming across the border They have mapped illegal border crossings from Ukraine in the period February 2022 to August 2023. The figures have been obtained from the neighboring countries of Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia. A further 21,000 men have attempted to flee. However, they were stopped by the Ukrainian authorities, writes the BBC. According to the channel, many swim or walk across the border. The assumption is based on the routes in the failed escape attempts. Great need for recruitment Ukraine has been at war for almost two winters. Like Russia, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are working to strengthen their defenses. The status of the army is unknown. The Ukrainians do not have an official loss figure. A Ukrainian soldier looks up at a drone. Photo: SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP They also do not release an official figure on the size of the army. But in September, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said that the army consists of more than 800,000 soldiers. This summer, the Americans estimated that the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed was 70,000. 40,000 men then make up a significant proportion. Ukraine has had several recruitment campaigns. On 1 October, a proposal was put forward to also enlist women, writes The New York Times. The battle for the Dnipro On Sunday, Ukrainian forces are said to have succeeded in chasing Russian forces away from the river Dnipro. – Preliminary information varies from three to eight kilometres, depending on the geography and landscape on the left bank of the river. Defense spokesperson Natalia Gumenjuk says this to Ukrainian television. Map showing where the front line runs in Ukraine. Photo: INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR AND AEI’S CRITICAL THREATS PROJECT / NRKKart showing where the front line runs in Ukraine. Photo: INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR AND AEI’S CRITICAL THREATS PROJECT / news Dnipro is an important frontline in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions of southern Ukraine. The battle for control of the river’s banks and the town of Avdijivka is the latest territorial development in the conflict. This is written, among other things, by the ISW think tank. Ukrainian officials board a boat on the banks of the Dnipro River at the front line near Kherson, Ukraine, Sunday, Oct. 15, 2023 Photo: Mstyslav Chernov / AP Ukraine now believes it has made significant progress to the east. However, such operations are militarily challenging. Soldiers crossing a river may lose the opportunity to receive reinforcements or retreat.
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Thousands of men flee Ukraine to avoid conscription – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
