Ukrainian man detained swimming to Moldova to evade draft

In the Odesa region of Ukraine, a man who tried to swim to Moldova was detained. He did so to avoid the draft. To prevent his personal belongings and documents from getting wet, he tightly wrapped them in plastic and tape.

In the Odesa region, border guards of the Podolsk Unit found a man hiding in the reeds during their patrol of the Kuchurhan Reservoir. He was trying to reach Moldova by sea.

The State Border Guard Service reported this incident. The escapee was a 31-year-old resident of Vinnytsia (a city in central Ukraine) who was trying to swim to the coast of the Transnistria region in Moldova.

The man meticulously planned his illegal route. He tightly wrapped his personal belongings and documents in plastic and tape to prevent them from getting wet.

Attentive border guards quickly noticed and detained the culprit. At the end of the journey, border guards gave the swimmer a boat ride, and the attempt to illegally cross the border was recorded in a report, reads the statement from the Border Guard Service.

As highlighted by the portal censor.net, the man is fined for violating border regime rules under Article 202 of the Code of Administrative Offenses.

According to martial law regulations in Ukraine, men aged 18 to 60 are not allowed—with few exceptions—to leave the country, as they may be mobilized into the army.

At the end of last year, BBC reported in a report based on data on illegal border crossings with Poland, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia that nearly 20 thousand men fled from Ukraine since the beginning of the war to avoid the draft.