HORBIVTSI, Ukraine -- Two tiny white figures can be seen sprinting across a grainy black-and-white screen.
Moments later, a third figure approaches from the opposite direction – and a voice is heard challenging them through the drone operator’s headphones. The Ukrainian border guard has prevented an illegal crossing into Romania.
In recent interviews with members of a border unit and a man who successfully fled the country, Current Time has pieced together a picture of how Ukraine’s mobilization crisis has fueled a criminal business on its western frontiers.
Border guards said men seeking to avoid military service pay up to the equivalent of $15,000 to smuggling gangs who hire local children to guide them – and that people are captured almost every day.
“They come up with various excuses,” said Vitaliy, a border guard, driving with the Current Time team near the Romanian border. “For example… 'I came to admire the beautiful countryside.'”
He declined to say how many people he had caught.
Ukraine barred men aged up to 60 from leaving the country following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, although it recently relaxed the rules for those aged 18-22.
Figures made public by Ukrainian legislators in May said 45,000 men had left the country illegally since the ban began. Many of them were dodging the draft, a growing problem as Ukraine struggles to fill the ranks of its armed forces.
But a man Current Time spoke to online, who wanted his name withheld for privacy and security reasons, had a different story.
He joined a paratroop unit 5 years ago, expecting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be able to achieve a negotiated end to the conflict against Russian and Russian-backed forces in the eastern Donbas region that had claimed some 13,000 lives since Moscow fomented separatism there in 2014.
“At that time there was a feeling that it was all coming to an end. Zelenskyy came to power [in 2019] and promised that he’d even make a deal with the devil if it made peace,” he said. “When the [full-scale] war started, I realized I had three choices: disability, psychological problems, or death. But then there was another option: desertion.”
After leaving his unit, he made his way to the Romanian border and lay low for a few weeks in a rented house on the Ukrainian side until people smugglers came for him.
“They picked me up one night in a car. They drove me to the border. “The Tisa River” -- which forms part of the border in western Ukraine – “was literally 15 meters in front of me,” he said. “There it was – freedom. I ran out and swam a little. It was about a 30-meter swim and I was on the Romanian side.”
Vitaliy, previously a local ambulance driver in a border area in the Chernivtsi region, said he had some understanding of people seeking to flee – but that it was his job to stop them.
The border guards use drones and hidden automatic camera traps to monitor the forests and cornfields in this area. Most attempted border crossings take place at night. Aside from the river, there’s also a razor-wire fence – but it doesn’t always stop people getting through.
“Sometimes they throw a roll mat or sleeping bags on the top and then climb over,” Yuriy, another border guard, told Current Time, the Russian-language TV and digital network run by RFE/RL. There were even instances of people bringing ladders, he said.
People caught trying to illegally cross the border can face fines and be taken to a recruitment office. The smugglers can be jailed for up to nine years, but this doesn’t apply to the child guides they often employ.
“Their basic task is the final stretch, 3-5 kilometers. They form groups of between 3 and 8 people. They lead them along small trails, because they know the borderland,” said Kostyantyn Lesnik, a senior officer of the Chernivtsi region border detachment.
The cat-and-mouse game on Ukraine’s western borders is a symptom of how Kyiv’s war effort is hampered by a shortage of soldiers. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and hundreds of thousands wounded in Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Desertion and absence without leave (AWOL) are taking their toll, with authorities opening more than 110,000 AWOL investigations in the first months of 2025, according to Prosecutor General’s Office figures reported by Ukrayinska Pravda – more than half the total number since the start of the invasion. More than 50,000 desertion cases have also been opened since February 2022.
The flight of draft-dodgers also reflects a problem with low recruitment that has sometimes resulted in men being dragged off the street.
Just this month, military and police personnel apparently involved in mobilization efforts have been suspected of using violence toward military-aged men.
On October 15, soldiers were detained in Ternopil, in western Ukraine, and are being investigated for kidnap and robbery after allegedly seeking to extort money from civilians and wounded soldiers.
Two days later, two police officers in Kyiv allegedly beat up a man outside a recruitment office.
Resistance to conscription generally has been driven by reports of corruption at draft offices and the well-connected finding legal ways to avoid being called up. A controversial mobilization law was introduced in 2024 in a bid to bolster numbers.
Also last year, investigations revealed that government officials had evaded military service by falsely claiming disability benefits.
"We have ruined the mobilization with our approaches,” war veteran and lawyer Oleh Simoroz told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. “We are discouraging people from going to serve in the army."
