"VELYKIY BYCHKIV, Ukraine -- It was seven weeks after Pvt. Ivan Pidmalivskiy had been due back on the front line when rescuers pulled his lifeless body from a river on Ukraine's western edge.
His death added to a toll of more than two dozen other men who have drowned in the River Tysa since events in Ukraine started, many of them fugitives from a military draft aimed at sustaining Ukraine's effort.
Pidmalivskiy was different: He had fought for two years after returning to Ukraine from abroad.
His family had seen the conflict take a growing toll on the burly 32-year-old, but he never revealed the depths of his exhaustion to them. "What was happening inside his soul, I don't know," said his mother, Liubov Pidmalivska.
The bodies in the river are a grim manifestation of one of the biggest issues facing Ukraine as the conflict enters its third summer without a clear path to victory. Many of the men who initially mobilized are dead, missing or wounded -- and the rest are worn out from more than two years of events. Ukraine's government has struggled to replace them after dragging its feet over a politically unpopular decision to expand the draft.
A law bans men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine. Still, tens of thousands have fled illegally and many are lying low to avoid conscription.
The delay in mustering fresh troops has increased the strain on soldiers serving with no prospect of demobilization other than through injury or death. Military contracts became indefinite when martial law was introduced in the early days of the events.
"We need to do this so that the guys have a normal rotation. Then their morale will be improved," said Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview with the BBC in May about the mobilization drive. A large number of brigades were "empty," he acknowledged.
Recruitment numbers have improved since Zelensky signed a law lowering the age of conscription to 25, along with other steps.
But the conscription campaign has also driven more men into the shadows and inflamed tensions in society. Across the country, men are hiding from draft officers, who have been filmed snatching potential conscripts off the street. Data from three neighboring countries indicates the number of men fleeing Ukraine illegally has increased in recent months. Border guards catch dozens of men daily.
It is a stark reversal from the heady first days of the war when so many men volunteered to fight that Ukraine's military turned some away. Many even returned from the safety of other countries, including Pidmalivskiy, who left his wife and two children in neighboring Slovakia.
"It was a shock," said Pidmalivska, recalling the day her eldest son turned up in his hometown of Velykiy Bychkiv, a village of some 9,000 people on the banks of the River Tysa, and said he was going to join the army.
The first year of the war went well for Pidmalivskiy. As Ukraine geared up for a major counteroffensive in the spring of last year, he was sent to France for training on the Caesar self-propelled howitzer.
But hopes of a breakthrough soon shattered against the hard reality of Russian defenses. Ammunition began to run low as political deadlock in the U.S. held up a key package of aid. As the enthusiasm of 2022 turned into a grinding battle of attrition, Pidmalivskiy's mood darkened.
In calls with his mother, he said everything was fine. But a fellow soldier who joined the army with Pidmalivskiy and served alongside him in the 148th Brigade said he confided that he and the rest of the unit were exhausted. "They were begging for a rotation," said the soldier, who gave only his call sign, Horets, in line with military protocol. Pidmalivskiy complained his commander wouldn't sign off on a vacation to see his family in Slovakia, and had underpaid him. "He was sick and tired of everything," Horets said.
In March, Pidmalivskiy was finally granted his third leave since the start of the events. From the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, he returned to his village in the west, where the government is struggling to prevent men from fleeing.
As Ukraine tightened conscription, 25-year-old Valeriy Minikhinov also came home to Velykiy Bychkiv. His mother had persuaded him to return from Kyiv so she could hide him away from the draft. "I was afraid of losing my son," Ninel Kopekova said.
Unknown to her, he decided to flee across the river to Romania with the aid of a smuggler he paid $4,000. A day after he vanished, Minikhinov's girlfriend revealed his plan to travel to Sweden, where relatives had found him a job. The journey ended about 25 miles downriver from Velykiy Bychkiv, where rescuers recovered his body in mid-February. An autopsy found Minikhinov's heart had failed.
A few weeks later, the end of Pidmalivskiy's vacation was approaching. He told his younger half-brother Mykola Yaremchuk he didn't want to go, but began gathering supplies he said he would take back to the front.
After an evening drinking beer together on March 28, the family woke to find Pidmalivskiy was gone.
Days later, Pidmalivskiy's commander called asking why he hadn't reported for duty. Still, the family waited nearly a week before going to the police.
Rumors began swirling around Velykiy Bychkiv that Pidmalivskiy had fled across the river to Romania. One person even claimed to have spoken to him on the other side.
As winter thawed, the Tysa swelled and the current grew stronger. In late April, rescuers recovered the bodies of two men beached on an islet in the river. Soon afterward, a fisherman spotted the body of another man in the water. Two more were pulled out the same day.
In mid-May, Romanian border guards found the corpse of a man floating in the river. He appeared to have been dead in the water for some time and wasn't carrying any documents. It was the 30th body recovered from the river since the events started.
Police sent Yaremchuk a photograph of a body three days later. The drowned man was of a similar build to his brother, but it was the shoes he recognized instantly. "They were my shoes," Yaremchuk said, recalling that Pidmalivskiy had borrowed them.
Five more bodies have been pulled out of the river since.
Unlike soldiers killed at conflict, Pidmalivskiy was buried without fanfare in a plot near Minikhinov's. It saddened Horets that his friend and fellow soldier should receive no tribute after returning to Ukraine voluntarily and fighting for two years. "He wasn't a draft dodger; he was a true patriot," he said.
So he presented Pidmalivskiy's family with the flag of their battalion, which they planted over his grave. "I don't care what anyone thinks," Yaremchuk said. "He deserved to be buried as a hero."
---
Some Head for the Mountains
At least 44,000 Ukrainians have left the country illegally since events started, according to data provided by border authorities in Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. That doesn't include men who crossed the border officially using documents exempting them from military service issued in exchange for bribes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the heads of the country's regional military-recruitment centers last year in an effort to crack down on corrupt practices that have enabled men to avoid conscription.
On the main road leading to the western Transcarpathia region, a sign at a checkpoint exhorts men not to leave. The mountainous region's borders with four countries -- Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland -- have made it a hub for illegal crossings.
Smugglers now cater to booming demand from men trying to flee the country, charging from $4,000 to $15,000 for their services." [1]
1. World News: Conflict-Weary Ukrainians Take Tragic Steps --- Over a dozen men have drowned in bid to flee service amid lack of fresh troops. Coles, Isabel; Sivorka, Ievgeniia. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 15 July 2024: A.18.
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