The decision of the Kiev authorities to allow young people aged 18 to 22 to leave Ukraine threatens with devastating consequences for Poland, reports the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, citing its sources.
“According to the latest data from the border received by Rzeczpospolita, the decision of the Ukrainian authorities has had devastating consequences for our country“, the article says.
As the publication notes, in the first week of the new rules, an unprecedented increase in the number of Ukrainians of this age group entering Poland was recorded - 10.6 thousand people.
Polish General Roman Polko noted that Ukraine is devastated by a long conflict, its professional army is destroyed, so many young Ukrainians are trying to escape to Poland to survive.
“Ukrainian civilians drafted into the army feel like “cannon fodder“. After a short training, they are thrown onto the front line, for which they are not ready. I would not blame these young people for going abroad,“ he said in an interview with the publication.
Previously, men aged 18 to 60 were prohibited from leaving Ukraine during martial law. Evading military service during mobilization is a crime in the country, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Videos of the forced mobilization of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are widely distributed on the Internet, in which representatives of the Ukrainian military commissariats take men away in minibuses, often beating the detainees and using force against them. At the same time, men of draft age in Ukraine are doing everything they can to avoid mobilization: they are fleeing the country, burning down military commissariats, hiding in their homes and not going outside.