Ukrainian men desperate to escape war are drowning as they flee

His death added to a toll of more than two dozen other men who have drowned in the River Tysa since Russia invaded, many of them fugitives from a military draft aimed at sustaining Ukraine’s war effort. Pidmalivskiy was different: He had fought for two years after returning to Ukraine from abroad to defend his country.

His family had seen the war take a growing toll on the burly 32-year-old, but he never revealed the depths of his exhaustion to them. “What was happening inside his soul, I don’t know," said his mother, Liubov Pidmalivska.

The bodies in the river are a grim manifestation of one of the biggest issues facing Ukraine as the war enters its third summer without a clear path to victory. Many of the men who initially mobilized to repel Russia’s invasion are dead, missing or wounded—and the rest are worn out from more than two years of brutal combat. 

Ukraine’s government has struggled to replace them after dragging its feet over a politically unpopular decision to expand the draft. A wartime law bans men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine. Still, tens of thousands have fled the country illegally and many are lying low to avoid conscription.

The delay in mustering fresh troops has increased the strain on soldiers serving with no prospect of demobilization other than through injury or death. Military contracts became indefinite when martial law was introduced in the early days of the war.

“We need to do this so that the guys have a normal rotation. Then their morale will be improved," said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview with the BBC in May about the mobilization drive. A large number of Brigades were “empty," he acknowledged.

Recruitment numbers have improved since Zelensky signed a law lowering the age of conscription to 25, along with other steps taken to replenish threadbare ranks. Despite the challenges, support for the war remains strong, according to a recent poll by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which found that 58% supported further mobilization compared with 35% against.

But the conscription campaign has also driven more men into the shadows and inflamed tensions in society. Across the country, men are hiding from draft officers, who have been filmed snatching potential conscripts off the street. Data from three neighboring countries indicates the number of men fleeing Ukraine illegally has increased in recent months. Border guards catch dozens of men daily, with some of the more desperate attempts ridiculed on social media.

“It’s impossible to look at it without shame," commented Maksym Zhorin, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, after border guards caught 41 men trying to escape in the back of a grain truck last month.

It is a stark reversal from the heady first days of the war when so many men volunteered to fight that Ukraine’s military turned some away. Many even returned from the safety of other countries, including Pidmalivskiy, who left his wife and two children in neighboring Slovakia.

“It was a shock," said Pidmalivska, recalling the day her eldest son turned up in his hometown of Velykiy Bychkiv, a village of some 9,000 people on the banks of the River Tysa, and said he was going to join the army.

The first year of the war went well for Pidmalivskiy. He took part in a surprise offensive that routed occupying forces from a swath of territory in the north. As Ukraine geared up for a major counteroffensive in the spring of last year, he was sent to France for training on the Caesar self-propelled howitzer.

But hopes of a breakthrough soon shattered against the hard reality of Russian defenses. Ammunition began to run low as political deadlock in the U.S. held up a key package of aid. As the victories of 2022 turned into a grinding battle of attrition against a larger, more powerful enemy, Pidmalivskiy’s mood darkened.

In calls with his mother, he said everything was fine. But a fellow soldier who joined the army with Pidmalivskiy and served alongside him in the 148th Brigade said he confided that he and the rest of the unit were exhausted. 

“They were begging for a rotation," said the soldier, who gave only his call sign, Horets, in line with military protocol. Pidmalivskiy complained his commander wouldn’t sign off on a vacation to see his family in Slovakia, and had underpaid him. “He was sick and tired of everything," Horets said.

In March, Pidmalivskiy was finally granted his third leave since the start of the war. From the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, he returned to his village in the west, where the government is struggling to prevent men from fleeing.

At least 44,000 Ukrainians have left the country illegally since Russia invaded, according to data provided by border authorities in Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. That doesn’t include men who crossed the border officially using documents exempting them from military service issued in exchange for bribes. 

Zelensky fired the heads of the country’s regional military-recruitment centers last year in an effort to crack down on corrupt practices that have enabled men to avoid conscription.

On the main road leading to the western Transcarpathia region, a sign at a checkpoint exhorts men not to leave. “We are strong," it reads. Once a tourist destination, the mountainous region’s borders with four countries—Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland—have made it a hub for illegal crossings.

Plainclothes officers are posted at train stations and monitor hotels for fugitive men. Many Ukrainians head for the mountains, undeterred by warnings about wildcats and bears. Rescue services sometimes receive calls from men who have lost their way in the rugged terrain. “It’s obvious they’re not tourists," said a spokeswoman for the services.

Smugglers now cater to booming demand from men trying to flee the country, charging from $4,000 to $15,000 for their services. It is more lucrative than their traditional trade in counterfeit and contraband cigarettes, of which Ukraine is a top source for Europe.

Many of the smugglers are locals with knowledge of the area. Some accompany their clients to the border or send children to guide them. Others provide directions remotely.

One smuggler recently detained by the police was equipped with a bug detector he used to ensure clients weren’t informants recording his activities, authorities said. Another was a local who attempted to smuggle 20,000 packs of cigarettes along with two men concealed in a secret compartment in a minivan. In May, a soldier on medical leave for concussion was charged with attempting to smuggle a draft evader across the border.

Men caught trying to cross the border illegally face a fine of up to $360 and 15 days in prison, though it isn’t a criminal offense. The bigger risk is of being fast-tracked to the front line.

As Ukraine tightened conscription, 25-year-old Valeriy Minikhinov also came home to Velykiy Bychkiv.

After Russia invaded, border guards extended barbed wire along the river banks. At night, drones with thermal imaging scan for men trying to swim across to Romania.

Minikhinov’s mother had persuaded him to return from Kyiv so she could hide him away from the draft. She had previously forbidden him from enlisting in the army with his father, who has been missing in action since the first year of the war. “I was afraid of losing my son," Ninel Kopekova said.

Unknown to her, he decided to flee across the river to Romania with the aid of a smuggler he paid $4,000. A day after he vanished, Minikhinov’s girlfriend revealed his plan to travel to Sweden, where relatives had found him a job. The journey ended about 25 miles downriver from Velykiy Bychkiv, where rescuers recovered his body in mid-February. An autopsy found Minikhinov’s heart had failed.

Reeling from the loss of her eldest son, Kopekova is now trying to get Minikhinov’s younger half-brother enrolled in a university abroad before he turns 18 this year and is no longer allowed to leave Ukraine. She blames the government for Minikhinov’s death: “They’re destroying our kids," she said.

A few weeks later, the end of Pidmalivskiy’s vacation was approaching. He told his younger half-brother Mykola Yaremchuk he didn’t want to go, but began gathering supplies he said he would take back to the front.

After an evening drinking beer together on March 28, the family woke to find Pidmalivskiy was gone. At first, they weren’t concerned. His bags were still there, though his passport and bank cards were missing.

Days later, Pidmalivskiy’s commander called asking why he hadn’t reported for duty. Still, the family waited nearly a week before going to the police.

Rumors began swirling around Velykiy Bychkiv that Pidmalivskiy had fled across the river to Romania. One person even claimed to have spoken to him on the other side, momentarily easing the family’s disquiet. But if Pidmalivskiy had made it safely, why hadn’t he been in contact?

As winter thawed, the Tysa swelled and the current grew stronger. In late April, rescuers recovered the bodies of two men beached on an islet in the river. Soon afterward, a fisherman spotted the body of another man in the water. Two more were pulled out the same day—one of them just 20 years old.

“They want to live," said Oleksandr Schubert, head of a team of rescuers who work along the river. “But instead of dying there [on the front line], they die here."

In mid-May, Romanian border guards found the corpse of another man floating in the river. He appeared to have been dead in the water for some time and wasn’t carrying any documents. It was the 30th body recovered from the river since Russia’s invasion.

Police sent Yaremchuk a photograph of a body three days later. The drowned man was of a similar build to his brother, but it was the shoes he recognized instantly. “They were my shoes," Yaremchuk said, recalling that Pidmalivskiy had borrowed them.

Many questions remained: Did Pidmalivskiy plan to flee all along, or was it a snap decision? Why had he risked crossing after heavy rain in March, when locals know the water is high? Five more bodies have been pulled out of the river since.

Unlike soldiers killed at war, Pidmalivskiy was buried without fanfare in a plot near Minikhinov’s.

It saddened Horets that his friend and fellow soldier should receive no tribute after returning to Ukraine voluntarily and fighting for two years. “He wasn’t a draft dodger; he was a true patriot," he said.

So he presented Pidmalivskiy’s family with the flag of their battalion, which they planted over his grave. “I don’t care what anyone thinks," Yaremchuk said. “He deserved to be buried as a hero."