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Investigations

13 студзеня

Fourfold rise in Ukrainians caught fleeing to Belarus to avoid conscription

The BIC worked out how much it might cost to organise an escape.

Authors: Maksym Savchuk, Yuliya Radionovich
Editors: Yana Mickevich, Lola Buryeva, Stanislau Ivashkevich

The number of Ukrainian men of conscription age who have tried to enter Belarus illegally to avoid mobilisation has increased by more than three hundredfold in the last two years. The BIC discovered how much evaders pay to cross the border illegally, as well as which countries they choose to avoid army service.

Escape by numbers

Ukrainian border guards caught 1,424 conscription-age men trying to cross into Belarus in 2025, according to figures the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine provided to journalists from the BIC and Ukrainian outlet Slidstvo.info. That’s an increase of four times compared to the previous year (326), and 356 times more than in 2023 (4).

“This year [2025 — ed. note], we have seen an increase in the number of people detained for attempting to illegally cross the border compared to previous years. <...> The figures on the border with Belarus are significantly lower than on the borders with Romania or Moldova, for example. However, there has been an increase”, Andrii Demchenko, assistant head of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, told reporters.

Last year, the Ukrainian-Belarusian border saw more detentions than the Ukrainian-Polish border. In 2024, authorities apprehended 467 evaders at the Polish border and 326 at the Belarusian border, but last year the number of those trying to enter Belarus increased nearly 4.5 times. According to the Ukrainian border guards, the Belarusian border was among the top five for the number of detained men eligible for military duty. The figures were higher for Hungary (1,841), Slovakia (2,265), and Moldova (4,937), whilst Romania saw the most at 10,066. The Belarusian border numbers are followed by the border with Poland (511 in 2025) and Russia (1).

Escape costs

In a statement to journalists, Yurii Shakhraichuk — the head of the press service of the 9th Border Guard Detachment named after Sich Riflemen that is responsible for patrolling the Ukrainian-Belarusian border — said that the detachment’s forces “had already uncovered over 70 organised criminal groups involved in smuggling people across the border”.

A BIC journalist had a conversation with a representative of one such group on Telegram. The latter offered to buy a proven escape route out of Ukraine, or to pay for a “turnkey” service. This would involve ordering a car with an experienced driver who could bypass Ukrainian checkpoints and take one to the border when “an insider shift” of border guards were on duty in Belarus. The fixer requested $16,000 to help two men leave the country illegally. This cost covers organising an escape to Belarus, followed by travel to the EU.

“Look, you’ll be collected from Kyiv, or anywhere else really. Location is no problem. You will be picked up directly from your home. <...> You pay when you are already in the car. And only then”, he assured.

Source: BIC

During the period of martial law in Ukraine, men aged 23 to 60 are restricted from leaving the country. Only those who meet the criteria for crossing the border and have the necessary documentation, such as individuals who have lost close relatives in the war, are permitted to do so.