With Ukraine’s military badly outnumbered by the invading Russians and desperately in need of more soldiers, villages like Makiv are being emptied of their fighting-age men.
Others from this rural area — about 45 miles from the borders of Romania and Moldova — have fled abroad or found ways to avoid the war, either with legitimate exemptions or by hiding.
Ukraine’s parliament is debating a bill to expand the draft pool, in part by lowering the eligibility age to 25 from 27, but few decisions are being made in Kyiv that will quickly answer the army’s urgent needs.
In the west, the mobilization drive has steadily sown panic and resentment in small agricultural towns and villages like Makiv, where residents said soldiers working for draft offices roam the near-empty streets searching for any remaining men.
“People are being caught like dogs on the street,” said Olha Kametyuk, 35, whose husband, Valentin, 36, was drafted in June by soldiers who approached him and asked for his papers after he stopped for coffee on the main road outside Makiv.
When the soldiers realized he was already serving, he said, they asked how he felt about men “‘who haven’t seen a single day of war” — which he said he regarded as a forced, hollow show of camaraderie.
On a recent morning, Lyuda Shydey stood weeping in front of the portrait of her younger brother, Serhiy Kozynyak, who was killed in 2022 in Avdiivka, a city that fell to Russian forces last month.
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Others from this rural area — about 45 miles from the borders of Romania and Moldova — have fled abroad or found ways to avoid the war, either with legitimate exemptions or by hiding.
Ukraine’s parliament is debating a bill to expand the draft pool, in part by lowering the eligibility age to 25 from 27, but few decisions are being made in Kyiv that will quickly answer the army’s urgent needs.
In the west, the mobilization drive has steadily sown panic and resentment in small agricultural towns and villages like Makiv, where residents said soldiers working for draft offices roam the near-empty streets searching for any remaining men.
“People are being caught like dogs on the street,” said Olha Kametyuk, 35, whose husband, Valentin, 36, was drafted in June by soldiers who approached him and asked for his papers after he stopped for coffee on the main road outside Makiv.
When the soldiers realized he was already serving, he said, they asked how he felt about men “‘who haven’t seen a single day of war” — which he said he regarded as a forced, hollow show of camaraderie.
On a recent morning, Lyuda Shydey stood weeping in front of the portrait of her younger brother, Serhiy Kozynyak, who was killed in 2022 in Avdiivka, a city that fell to Russian forces last month.
The original article contains 1,391 words, the summary contains 224 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!