- Smugglers are using Telegram groups to sell their services to Ukrainian draft dodgers, per the BBC.
- Services include creating fake medical exemptions and adding pretend children to their families.
- A Ukrainian lawmaker told the outlet that corruption is “widespread.”
Smugglers are using Telegram to sell their services to Ukrainian men trying to flee the army’s compulsory military conscription, according to a BBC investigation.
At least six Telegram groups, some of which have several thousand members, are offering the services, per a BBC undercover reporter.
The reporter, named Andrey by the outlet, spent a month corresponding with smugglers as a prospective Ukrainian draft dodger.
Services being offered included creating fake medical exemptions, adding pretend children to families, and organizing illegal border crossings, Andrey told the outlet.
And smugglers appear to be profiting off of Ukrainian men’s desperation to escape the conflict, selling medical exemption certificates for about $4,300, Andrey said, per the outlet.
Smugglers told Andrey that the price included a bribe for the official making them, he said — a sign of the persisting corruption among Ukrainian officials.
Under Ukraine’s martial law, able-bodied men aged between 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country except in specific circumstances, like those with disabilities or fathers raising three or more children, according to Visit Ukraine.
However, the BBC reported that more than 40,000 Ukrainian men have fled or tried to escape military conscription between the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and August 2023.
About 19,000 crossed illegally into neighboring countries, the outlet reported, based on data collected from Romania, Moldova, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia.
Meanwhile, about 21,100 men were caught trying to escape, officials said, according to the BBC.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Ukraine has taken steps to crack down on corruption, and to stop conscription-age men from leaving the country, including launching a whistleblower hotline and firing recruitment officers who allegedly took bribes from draft dodgers.
But corruption is “very resilient,” Fedir Venislavskyi, a Ukrainian lawmaker and member of the Ukraine Committee on National Security, told the BBC.
“The government realizes that this phenomenon is not isolated and that it is widespread,” he said.
Venislavskyi added that attempts to flee conscription with fake documentation could end in the next two years, under Ukraine’s new digital system.
