‘I saw a severed head, someone being shot’: After a month at the front, Ukrainian conscript Ivan Ichchenko deserted last year, even if it meant paying a fortune in bribes and suffering infamy .
Like him, other men initially determined to fight the Russian invasion preferred, faced with the violence of the conflict, to take the tangent by taking advantage of the networks of corruption that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is now trying to uproot.
“I thought I was a superhero before, but when you see the war in real life, you realize that you have nothing to do with it,” said the 30-year-old, long hair, three-day beard and finger ring.
“To stop seeing this,” he paid $5,000 in bribes for a car with a government license plate to drop him off in a forest near Hungary, where a hole in a fence allowed him to to cross the border illegally.
Due to the war, Ukrainians between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the territory, except with special permission.
Deserters are liable to sentences of up to twelve years in prison, while those who refuse to serve risk five years in prison.
Ivan Ichchenko is therefore now forced into exile. It has circulated in Europe and is currently in Dresden, eastern Germany.
If the Russian invasion united the nation, some still prefer to leave. Since the start of the war, 13,600 people trying to leave the country illegally have been arrested, according to border guard spokesman Andriï Demtchenko.
Some 6,100 others were caught with falsified documents, which gives some insight into the phenomenon, even if AFP did not obtain from the authorities overall statistics on all those who managed to evade the call of the flag.
President Zelensky very publicly tackled the problem in early August by sacking all regional conscription officials, and more than 200 conscription centers were raided.
The Head of State denounces the corruption of the administration of the conscripts which he describes as “treason”.
This type of arrangement is far from new, however, as corruption has been endemic for decades in Ukraine.
“Everyone knows someone who can lend a hand,” confirms to AFP another exile presenting himself as Ivan, and who, not proud, prefers to keep his last name silent.
He was reformed in May thanks to a false medical certificate, paid 5,000 dollars.
“I know it’s wrong, it’s upsetting,” the 24-year-old said.
The guilt these Ukrainians who refuse to fight face when they meet compatriots across Western Europe.
This is the case of Evguène Kouroutch, sometimes confronted with embarrassing situations at the wheel of his taxi in Warsaw.
“I was told: our husbands are fighting at the front and you cowards are hiding!” whispers the 38-year-old reserve officer, who was in Poland when the war broke out and has given up returning to Poland. his country.
A man of his age does not go unnoticed among the million Ukrainians welcomed in Poland: half of the refugees are children and more than three quarters of the adults are women separated from their spouses, who have responded.
He says he understands that this is a “painful” and “conflictual” subject. “I know I have to defend my country but at the same time, my family needs me and I have a duty to take care of them,” he explains, torn.
Originally from Odessa in southern Ukraine, he brought in his 5-year-old son Kirill and his 8-year-old daughter Anastasia, along with his wife. “When I look at them, it gives me strength and comforts me in the idea that I am not doing this for nothing”.
It was also with the future of his family in mind that Bogdan Marynenko took the road to Poland in August 2022, two days before his eighteenth birthday, pushed by his relatives and while his father was fighting arms in hand. .
“If something happens to him, my mother and my sisters will only have me,” recalls this young man swimming in clothes that are too big. Today, he works on construction sites to keep the pot boiling.
31/08/2023 22:58:25 – Warsaw (AFP) © 2023 AFP
