NEARLY 100,000 men of fighting age have fled Ukraine in the last two months, as the fascist-supported regime of Volodymyr Zelensky desperately scrambles to find enough troops willing to sacrifice their lives for an imperialist-provoked war to try to defeat Russia.
Vast numbers have fled the country, after the Zelensky regime relaxed movement restriction in August, in an attempt to tackle the already escalating conscription crisis, according to reports in the Daily Telegraph and Politico Europe papers.
Data cited by both news outlets showed 99,000 Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 22 crossed the border into Poland in September and October compared to just 45,300 between January and the end of August.
From Poland, which is the main route out of Ukraine, many have travelled on to Germany seeking refuge from being conscripted into a war that is increasingly seen by Ukrainians as unwinnable.
At the start of the imperialist war drive in February 2022, designed to weaken Russia and affect a regime change, Zelensky imposed martial law that blocked Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country.
This law applied even if those men were not eligible for being conscripted into the military because of medical conditions, disabilities, or being the primary carer for vulnerable family members.
The current draft age is between 25 to 60 years of age.
This age eligibility was reduced from the previous level of 27 years in April last year as the Ukrainian military scrambled to replace the huge number of its soldiers killed in three years of war.
While the Ukrainian military keep the number of troops killed secret, the Washington based Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimate that between 60,000 and 100,000 have been killed since 2022.
Zelensky’s backers in NATO have long insisted that Ukraine has not done enough to recruit more soldiers to be slaughtered, with the Telegraph reporting: ‘American generals and politicians had complained that Mr Zelensky’s refusal to draft any men of fighting age was hurting Ukrainian’s hopes of resisting Russian invasion.’
While US generals and politicians are calling for all Ukrainian youth to be sent to the meat grinder on the front, to sacrifice their young lives for the imperialist dream of world domination, their president Donald Trump is pulling US troops out of Romania, Europe’s eastern border with Ukraine.
Trump is also clearly intending to build up a military presence in the far east, while mobilising troops in cities across America as he gears up for war on the working class at home.
In a doomed effort to increase conscription in August the Ukrainian regime introduced a new policy that permitted youth below the recruitment age to leave the country, partly to discourage families from sending their teenage boys abroad before they reached 18.
Zelensky hoped that granting the ‘freedom’ to leave would encourage them to return and volunteer to fight.
Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Sviridenko stated that the policy was intended to help citizens abroad ‘maintain their ties with Ukraine’.
Hope springs eternal in the desperate mind of Zelensky and his administration as nearly 100,000 have seized this opportunity to flee the hellhole of Ukraine, created by US imperialism, and its backers in the UK and Europe.
With world imperialism reeling from economic collapse, and with the most powerful capitalist nation in the world suffering humiliating defeats, in its desperate attempts to impose its domination by military force, the time is ‘rotten ripe’, as Trotsky wrote, for the working class to put capitalism out of its imperialist death agony with the victory of the world socialist revolution.
The working class in the US, UK, Europe and across the world have the power to end the imperialist wars by overthrowing their capitalist governments and bringing in workers governments and socialism.
This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to provide the leadership required to organise the victory of the world socialist revolution. The only way forward is to end bankrupt capitalism and replace it with the victory of the world socialist revolution.