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.
In contrast, Vylkove’s women come and go freely, and for some, the changes have been liberating, opening up jobs that had been closed to them.
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.
Draft dodgers who can make their way around checkpoints often abandon their cars and dash on foot through trees and vegetable gardens to Moldova. Criminal networks smuggle people out of the country illegally, for a steep price.
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.
