KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine has detained a gang, including two border guard officers, suspected of charging men about $15,000 dollars each to get them out of the country to dodge the military draft, law enforcement officials said on Tuesday.
The group helped about 30 people leave Ukraine, which has imposed a ban on most men aged between 18 and 60 leaving the country following Russia’s invasion, by listing them as disabled, police said in a post on Telegram.
The scheme was started by a border guard officer and a businessman in Ukraine’s western Zakarpattia region, who then recruited a second border guard and other accomplices, the prosecutor general’s office said in a separate Telegram post.
Law enforcement agencies published photos of the detention of some of the suspects at their homes, showing large quantities of euro banknotes, multiple mobile phones, and luxury SUVs.
Many Ukrainians have volunteered to fight in the more than three-year-old war but hundreds of thousands of men have been compulsorily drafted into the military.
Ukrainian officials say they are now facing widespread attempts to avoid the draft.
(Reporting by Christian Lowe, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
