800,000 Ukrainian men have gone ‘underground’ – MP

Fighting-age men have disengaged from the legal economy to evade conscription, the Financial Times has reported.

An estimated 800,000 Ukrainian men have gone “underground” due to the threat of military mobilization amid the conflict with Russia, a senior MP in Kiev, Dmitry Natalukha, has told the Financial Times. The lawmaker stated the case for economic-driven exemptions from the draft.

Kiev introduced a harsh new system for military conscription earlier this year, which was intended to discourage draft avoidance through the threat of serious punishment. One consequence was that businesses operating legally in Ukraine are now at a disadvantage compared to those in the ‘shadow economy,’ the FT explained. Draft-dodgers change their addresses and prefer to be paid in cash to stay under the radar, it added.

“We are working at the limit,” the HR director of a large steel mill told the newspaper, explaining the issues his company faces due to workforce shortages. The FT reported on Sunday how Ukrainian MPs plan to tackle the problem by revamping the system for draft exemptions.

One proposal penned by Natalukha, the chair of the Economic Development Committee, would allow businesses to shield up to 50% of their employees from mobilization by paying a fixed fee of about $490 per month. A competing bill would protect anyone with a wage over a threshold of $890, who are presumably of greater value to the war effort when contributing to the economy than they would be if sent to fight.

Natalukha told the FT that his proposal would keep around 895,000 men from military service and generate roughly $4.9 billion for Kiev’s war chest.

He previously argued in Ukrainian media that his bill is preferable to the alternative because it does not fuel the perception that only poor people who cannot bribe their way out of the draft have to fight. Ukrainians collectively pay anywhere between $700 million and $2 billion per year for fraudulent ways to avoid mobilization, he estimates.

The current system allows the government to decide which agencies and businesses are essential for Ukraine and offer them partial or full immunity from mobilization. An update last month, for instance, issued waivers to 100% of the employees of NGOs that receive foreign grants and are engaged in political activities.

Moscow perceives the conflict as a US-driven proxy war, in which Ukrainians serve as “cannon fodder” and are forced to fight by their Western-dependent government.