KYIV — As Ukraine prepares to ramp up military conscription to defend against Russia’s invasion — after a key deadline to register with recruitment offices passed this week — some men are dodging the draft preemptively by paying thousands of dollars for help to illegally leave the country.

Smugglers who assist with border crossings often charge more than $5,000, according to Ukrainian officials and men who have paid for the service. One man was driven by bus with others in masks to a forest. Guides then led them on foot to breach a fence at the Hungarian border.

Another man said that he and more than 20 other men walked more than 10 miles across difficult terrain and past surveillance posts, drones and even search dogs. One man could not keep up and was left behind.

Those caught often face exactly what they were hoping to avoid: military service.

“The main thing was that I realized at some point — what scared me - that I would not be able to make my own decisions about whether to mobilize or not, that I would not be able to decide the fate of my freedom,” said Oleksandr, 37, who paid $8,000 for help crossing the border in late May.

Like others in this story, he declined to provide his surname because he broke the law.

The high costs and risks some men are willing to undertake to avoid conscription underscores a growing tension in Ukrainian society: More than two years after Russia’s invasion, people strongly support the military but few men who haven’t already volunteered to fight want to do so now.

With units on the front badly depleted, Ukraine’s parliament adopted the mobilization law requiring all draft-age men to renew their personal data online or at military offices by July 16; failing to do so is a criminal offense. The law also lowered Ukraine’s minimum conscription age to 25.

Now that the deadline has passed, many expect a spate of draft slips to be distributed. Ukrainian officials haven’t specified how many men they intend to conscript, but the former commander in chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny previously suggested up to 500,000 were needed to replenish ranks. Zaluzhny’s successor, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, has said significantly less men will be drafted but has not offered any details.

Even before the deadline, officials said the number of newly mobilized soldiers has increased — more than doubling in May and June compared to the previous two months.

Men aged 18 to 60 have been barred from leaving the country without permission since martial law took hold in February 2022. Kyiv increasingly has clamped down on who is allowed to leave legally for a short time and for a specific purpose. Even some members of parliament have complained that their requests for business trips were denied.

Oleksandr, who worked at an IT company, said he decided to leave in May after a week in which three men in his office were mobilized on their way to work by draft officers patrolling the streets.

Through a friend of a friend, he was connected to someone organizing passage out of the country. Oleksandr pooled his savings and paid $2,000 in advance.

He was told to pack water and arrive at a meeting point near Ukraine’s border with Moldova. There, the back of a freight truck opened. Twenty men were already inside, Oleksandr said. The journey included a 12-mile walk, so the group was given screenshots of the coordinates for the route and advised to download offline maps in advance.

After a four-hour hike through dense forest and swamps, he reached Transnistria — the pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova.

“At the border itself, there are ditches and there are so-called dragon’s teeth,” Oleksandr said, referring to concrete pyramid barriers. “We must have triggered the sensors because the lights came on, and somewhere further, we saw lights moving toward us and heard dogs.”

“One guy who could not physically withstand such an adventure, the stress, he fell behind at some point and didn’t make it with us,” he added.

After reaching Transnistria, Oleksandr said he was driven to a hotel in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, where the person who coordinated his travel arranged for someone to pick up Oleksandr’s passport and have it stamped, making it appear that he entered Moldova legally. After that, Oleksandr boarded a plane to Germany, unsure if or when he will ever return to Ukraine.

“I have mixed feelings about it,” Oleksandr said. “There are hours when I regret it, and hours when I don’t.” Ukraine’s borders with Moldova and Romania have been the most popular for people to attempt illegal crossings, said Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s border guard service.

More than 30,000 Ukrainian men have illegally crossed into both countries since the start of Russia’s invasion, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported recently, citing data from the Moldovan and Romanian border police. Some routes are especially perilous. Demchenko said nearly 40 people have died trying to swim across the Tysa River along Ukraine’s western border.

“There are a lot of situations where our servicemen manage to pick up people from the water when they’re already on the verge of dying — some from hypothermia, some from exhaustion,” he said.

Demchenko said that there had not been a major increase in attempted illegal crossings since the law overhauling Ukraine’s mobilization process came into effect in May. There were fewer attempted breaches in June than in May, he said.

One reason for that could be because the prices smugglers set for help getting out of the country spiked, according to men who inquired about the option. Demchenko said members of more than 500 such “criminal groups” have been arrested since the war started.

Some have charged nearly $20,000, Demchenko said.

Artem, 27, who left the country by crossing into Hungary a month ago, said he paid $9,000. He had been considering his future for a year — to join the army as many of his friends did, or to leave Ukraine altogether.

He started to fear going outside his home at all because it risked being handed a draft slip on the street. Artem traveled to western Ukraine and then waited four days for the organizer he paid to tell him that it was safe to attempt crossing the border. Guides led Artem’s group, even raking over the men’s tracks, and created an opening at the fenced border.

Once in Hungary, the men turned themselves over to the police.

“They searched us, threw away our nail scissors and all that,” he said. “We were put in a border guard car and driven to the border. At the Hungarian border, they took our passports, put us in some garage and we waited for about an hour while the investigators interrogated us.

They asked us how we crossed the border, how we ended up in Hungary, how much we paid, what our route was.”

Artem said his interrogation lasted about 15 minutes before he was told to “have a good trip,” and let go. Demchenko said that while neighboring countries’ border services exchange information with Ukraine about tactics people use to illegally cross, not all of them turn away or deport the fleeing Ukrainians they catch. Some men have sought to avoid conscription through legal loopholes, such as enrolling in postgraduate studies. Before 2022, up to 8,000 people enrolled in postgraduate studies annually, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science. But in 2024, more than 246,000 people registered for the entrance test for master’s and postgraduate studies. As a result, admission rules have been stiffened.

Others are waiting to make their decision about whether to leave. One 35-year-old man living in Kyiv already has his escape plan organized. It will cost about $7,000 — through smugglers his friend used that got him across Ukraine’s border with Moldova. The main motivation to leave, the man said, was that he is unsure of his future in Ukraine amid constant Russian bombing and a war that is unlikely to end anytime soon.

“I want to have a kid,” he said. “And I just don’t see any prospects to raise a family here.” Anastacia Galouchka contributed to this report.

related stories

• Trump’s VP pick fuels European anxiety over US backing for Kyiv
• Russian fighter jets over Baltic Sea prompt response by 2 newest NATO members