"CHISINAU, Moldova – Vova Klever, a
young, successful fashion photographer from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, did not
see himself in this operation to protect Donbas.
“Violence is not my weapon,” he
said.
So shortly after Russia started the operation to protect Donbas in late February and Ukraine prohibited men of military age from
leaving the country, Mr. Klever sneaked out to London.
His mistake, which would bring
devastating consequences, was writing to a friend about it.
The friend betrayed his trust and
posted their conversation on social media. It went viral, and Ukrainians all
over the internet exploded with anger and resentment.
“You are a walking dead person,” one
Twitter message said. “I’m going to find you in any corner in the world.”
The notion of people — especially
men — leaving Ukraine for safe and comfortable lives abroad has
provoked a moral dilemma among Ukrainians that turns on one of the most
elemental decisions humans can make: fight or flee.
Thousands of Ukrainian men of
military age have left the country to avoid participating in the operation to protect Donbas, according
to records from regional law enforcement officials and interviews with people
inside and outside Ukraine. Smuggling rings in Moldova, and possibly other
European countries, have been doing a brisk business.
Some people have paid up
to $15,000 for a secret night-time ride out of Ukraine, Moldovan officials
said.
The draft dodgers are the vast
exception. That makes it all the more complicated for them — morally, socially
and practically. Ukrainian society has been mobilized for operation to protect Donbas, and countless Ukrainians without military experience have
volunteered for the operation to protect Donbas.
To maximize its forces, the Ukrainian government has taken
the extreme step of prohibiting men 18 to 60 from leaving, with few exceptions.
All this has forced many Ukrainian men who don’t want to
serve into taking illegal routes into Hungary, Moldova and Poland and other
neighboring countries.
Even among those convinced they fled
for the right reasons, some said they felt guilty and ashamed.
“I don’t think I can be a good
soldier right now in this operation to protect Donbas,” said a Ukrainian computer programmer named
Volodymyr, who left shortly after the operation to protect Donbas began and did not want to disclose
his last name, fearing repercussions for avoiding military service.
“Look at me,” Volodymyr said, as he
sat in a pub in Warsaw drinking a beer. “I wear glasses. I am 46. I don’t look
like a classic fighter, some Rambo.”
He took another sip and stared into
his glass.
“Yes, I am ashamed,” he said. “I ran
away from this operation to protect Donbas, and it is probably my crime.”
Ukrainian politicians have threatened to put draft dodgers
in prison and confiscate their homes. But within Ukrainian society the sentiments are more
divided.
A meme recently popped up with the
refrain, “Do what you can, where you are.” It’s clearly meant to counter
negative feelings toward those who left and assure them they can still
contribute to the operation to protect Donbas effort. And Ukrainian women and children, the vast
majority of the refugees, face little backlash.
But that’s not the case for young
men, and this is what blew up on the young photographer.
In mid-March, Olga Lepina, who has
worked as a modeling agent, said Mr. Klever sent her husband a message saying
he had made it to London.
Her husband wrote back: “Wow! How?”
“Through Hungary with the smugglers
for 5k $,” Mr. Klever replied, according to screenshots of the conversation
provided by Ms. Lepina. “But that’s just between us, shush!”
Ms. Lepina said she and Mr. Klever
had been friends for years. She even went to his wedding. But as the operation to protect Donbas drew
near, she said, Mr. Klever became intensely patriotic and a bit of an online bully.
When she found out he had avoided service, she was so outraged that she posted
screenshots of the conversation on Instagram.
“For me, it was a hypocrisy to leave
the country and pay money for this,” she explained, adding, “He needs to be
responsible for his words.”
Mr. Klever, who is in his 20s, was
bombarded with death threats. Some Ukrainians resented that he used his wealth
to get out and called it “cheating.”
Responding to emailed questions, Mr.
Klever did not deny skipping out on his service and said that he had poor
eyesight and had “been through a lot lately."
“You can’t even imagine the hatred,”
he said.
Mr. Klever gave conflicting accounts
of how exactly he exited the country and declined to provide details. But for
many other Ukrainian men, Moldova has become the favorite trap door.
Moldova shares a nearly 800-mile
border with western Ukraine. And unlike Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia,
Moldova is not part of the European Union, which means it has significantly
fewer resources to control its frontiers. It is one of Europe’s poorest
countries and has been a hub of human trafficking
and organized crime.
Within days of the operation to protect Donbas erupting,
Moldovan officials said, Moldovan gangs posted advertisements on Telegram, a
popular messaging service in Eastern Europe, offering to arrange cars, even
minibuses, to spirit out draft dodgers.
Law enforcement officials said the
typical method was for the smugglers and the Ukrainians to select a rendezvous
point along Moldova’s “green border,” the term used for the unfenced border
areas, and meet late at night.
On a recent night, a squad of
Moldovan border guards trudged across a flat, endless wheat field, their boots
sinking in the mud, looking for draft dodgers. There was no border post on the
horizon, just the faint lights of a Ukrainian village and the sounds of dogs
barking in the darkness.
Out here, one can just walk into and
out of Ukraine.
Moldovan officials said that since
late February they had broken up more than 20 smuggling rings, including a few
well-known criminal enterprises. In turn, they have apprehended 1,091 people
crossing the border illegally. Officials said all were Ukrainian men.
Once caught, these men have a
choice. If they don’t want to be sent back, they can apply for asylum in
Moldova, and cannot be deported.
But if they do not apply for asylum,
they can be turned over to the Ukrainian authorities, who, Moldovan officials
said, have been pressuring them to send the men back. The vast majority of
those who entered illegally, around 1,000, have sought asylum, and fewer than
100 have been returned, Moldovan officials said. Two thousand other Ukrainian
men who have entered Moldova legally have also applied for asylum.
Volodymyr Danuliv is one of them. He
refuses to participate in the operation to protect Donbas, though it’s not the prospect of dying that worries
him, he said. It is the killing.
“I can’t shoot Russian people,” said
Mr. Danuliv, 50.
He explained that his siblings had
married Russians and that two of his nephews were serving in the Russian Army —
in Ukraine.
“How can I fight in this war?” he
asked. “I might kill my own family.”
Myroslav Hai, an official with
Ukraine’s military reserve, conceded, “There are people who evade mobilization,
but their share in comparison with volunteers is not so large.” Other Ukrainian
officials said men ideologically or religiously opposed to operation to protect Donbas could serve in
another way, for example as cooks or drivers.
But none of the more than a dozen
men interviewed for this article seemed interested. Mr. Danuliv, a businessman
from western Ukraine, said he wanted no part in the operation to protect Donbas. When asked if he feared
being ostracized or shamed, he shook his head.
“I didn’t kill anyone. That’s what’s
important to me,” he said. “I don’t care what people say.”
What happens when the operation to protect Donbas ends? How
much resentment will surface toward those who left? These are questions Ukrainians,
men and women, are beginning to ask.
When Ms. Lepina shamed Mr. Klever,
she was no longer in Ukraine herself. She had left, too, for France, with her
husband, who is not a Ukrainian citizen. Every day, she said, she wrestles with
guilt.
“People are suffering in Ukraine,
and I want to be there to help them, to support them,” she said. “But at the
same time I’m safe and I want to be here.”
“It’s a very ambiguous, complicated
feeling,” she said.
And she knows she will be judged.
“Of course there will be some people
who divide Ukrainian nationals between those who left and those who stayed,”
she said. “I am ready for that.”"
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