Millions of Ukrainian Men Are Fleeing a Cruel Conscription System | The Nation
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August 18, 2026
Millions of Ukrainian Men Are Fleeing a Cruel Conscription System
They are being written out of the narrative.
Dan Storyev
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Teenagers walk by a military recruitment poster in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, in 2024.(Andriy Andriyenko / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
Odesa, Ukraine—A clear-eyed middle-aged man leans in closer, yelping in broken English: “I don’t want to die, understand? But they got me. Now I have to go.” He downs another shot of vodka. The restaurant terrace is full of people enjoying their shashliks. They don’t mind the man and his raucous friends, as send-off parties for newly mobilized soldiers are no longer noteworthy.
They are a part of the city’s soundscape just like the moped buzzing of Russia’s 440-pound Shahed drones or the howl of air raid sirens.
Every now and again these drones make car-size holes in apartment buildings and kill civilians. The front line is about 90 miles away from here, but the way locals treat it, it might as well be on the moon. Odesa is an eclectic, sun-soaked Black Sea port city where baroque Russian Imperial buildings mix with Soviet panel housing, looking out to steep beaches. Those beaches stay packed even when explosions cut through blaring American pop music—only a few foreign tourists gingerly jog for shelter.
But beneath the veneer of relative normality, just like in the rest of Ukraine, Odesa is home to a self-designated underclass of men aged 25–60, who live as fugitives in their own country. In Ukraine they are called uhylyanty, which is derogatory slang for “dodgers.” For years, the uhylyanty have been trying to avoid Ukraine’s massive military mobilization campaign that began the same day as the full-scale Russian invasion.
In the early months of 2022, volunteers were lining up for the front. Not anymore. It is unclear how many are hiding, but estimates range from 2 to 6 million. This is not widely researched, and in the English-language press the dodgers issue is drowned out by pieces highlighting Ukraine’s innovation and heroism.
Many in Western capitals describe the war as a struggle between good and evil, a fight for the West’s freedom and security. The Kremlin has also demonstrated its utter disregard for civilian lives. Russian soldiers torture, murder, and rape on a mass scale.
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To stop Putin’s onslaught, Kyiv is desperate for people. Success, for all the high-tech drones, remains dependent on bodies. “If two years ago commanders needed rockets, now they need people,” said Oleksandr Syrski, former Ukraine military chief.
Yet millions of Ukrainians don’t want to fight. Why?
The Fear
In Odesa I met Taras (name changed at his request) at a beachside bar. A staunch Protestant, Taras recoils at the idea of killing. The bulky, six-foot-six 29-year-old does not look like a fugitive as he bites into his burger. “You see, I am big,” the IT developer says with a proud smile. “That’s why the Tetseka doesn’t bother me. I have no fear.”
TCR, pronounced as te-tse-ka in Ukrainian, stands for Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support. This is Ukraine’s state agency responsible for organizing mobilization.
The Tetseka officers move in groups of three to five men, sometimes dressed as civilians. Often they are accompanied by police. They drive Renault Masters, Ford Transits, or other generic minibuses with pitch-black tinted windows. These minibuses are how the mobilization got its folk moniker: busyfykatsia or busification.
In a poll last year, a record 68 percent of Ukrainians said they don’t trust the Tetseka. But some still view mobilization as necessary. I spoke with energetic Kateryna Musiyenko, 27, who is a part of the activist group Robymo vam Nervy (Making You Nervous), which advocates ridding Odesa of Soviet and Russian cultural heritage.
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“For me [mobilization] is not a problem because most of my relatives and friends are already mobilized,” Kateryna says. “It’s constitutionally mandatory. And I don’t think it’s a problem because we have to do that. Who will do that if not the Ukrainians? Maybe the methods are not pleasant. But when people ignore [draft] letters for months and they try to escape it and they are sitting home just to not fight, for me, it’s really...