More than 49.000 people have been arrested in Ukraine for attempting to flee the country by illegally crossing the border since the start of martial law imposed in 2022 due to the Russian invasion, the border service reported today.
Ukrainians aged 18 to 60 are prohibited from traveling abroad, and those who want to avoid mobilization cross the border illegally, sometimes at the risk of their lives.
The border service has arrested 24 such fugitives since February 2022, 45.000, its spokesman Andriy Demchenko told Agence France-Presse.
He said 4.000 people had been arrested for trying to leave the country through legal crossings with false documents.
Most Ukrainians trying to flee illegally pass through the mountains and forests of the western Transcarpathian region, where the porous border with Romania and Hungary is located. The area has long been a smuggling corridor.
In January, Ukrainian police announced that they had conducted more than 600 searches to arrest organizers who had helped hundreds of people cross the border illegally.
The scandal-ridden military mobilization system has been criticized in Ukraine and widely disputed as inefficient, corrupt, and unfair, leading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dismiss all regional officials in charge of mobilization in 2023.
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