The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine said it detained around 45,000 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started on Feb. 24, 2022.
“Another 4,000 citizens were detained at checkpoints for attempting to illegally cross the border using forged documents or by falsifying other grounds that would give them the right to cross the border,” a spokesman for the service, Andriy Demchenko, told AFP on Wednesday.
Under martial law, Ukrainian military servicemen aged 18-60 are forbidden from leaving the country without official permission and must carry military registration documents with them at all times.
Shortages of manpower have been an issue in Ukraine, as Kyiv seeks to swell its ranks to maintain its nearly one million-man army.
Both Ukraine and Russia have struggled with demographics that have been shrinking since the 1990s. The average age of a service member in Ukraine’s army is 40, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report from 2024.
With a smaller pool of younger recruits, Ukraine initially did not allow for mobilization for men under 27, but passed a law to lower the age to 25 in April 2024.
Last year, Ukraine resisted pressure from the administration under former US President Joe Biden to lower its conscription age from 25 to 18, citing the need to protect its future demographics and delays in weapons deliveries, which led to insufficient weapons to arm fresh troops.
“Ukraine cannot be expected to compensate for delays in logistics or hesitation in support with the youth of our men on the frontline,” Dmytro Lytvyn, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s communications adviser, said at the time.
Over three years into the war, attacks on Ukraine’s military recruitment service have increased, with several bombings of recruitment offices this year and one army officer shot when escorting conscripts in February. Kyiv has accused Russian intelligence of staging the attacks by luring locals, often via financial rewards.
Meanwhile, Russia has been spending a record 2 billion rubles ($21 million) per day recruiting over 30,000 soldiers per month in May.
Ukraine has attempted to compensate for its manpower shortages with a greater reliance on drones and unmanned systems.