Viktor Pinkhasov can’t stop smiling. He has just managed to escape Ukraine after hiking alone for five days across the Carpathian Mountains.
“I want to go and be free, to live,” the 34-year-old told CNN in disbelief after arriving in neighboring Romania. He is one of dozens making the illegal crossing from western Ukraine every week.
After nearly four years of pushing against Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine is facing a growing manpower crisis: Kyiv’s forces are trying to hold a more than 600-mile front line against Russian troops who are pressing a relentless war of attrition.
CNN spoke to half a dozen draft evaders who didn’t want to risk dying in a conflict with no end in sight – despite attempts by the Trump administration and foreign powers to negotiate one. Russia meanwhile can draw on a population more than three times larger than Ukraine’s to fill its ranks, despite mounting casualties.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened nearly 290,000 criminal cases into soldiers’ absence without leave and desertion up to September, according to the Ukrainska Pravda media outlet. Martial law bars all men aged 23 to 60 who are eligible for military service from leaving the country.
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