The Security Service, the State Bureau of Investigation and the National Police have dismantled four new schemes to evade mobilisation and detained seven organisers of these schemes in the Kharkiv, Kirovohrad and Vinnytsia regions.

For money, the operators helped those liable for military service to evade conscription in various ways, including through forged medical certificates, fictitious employment and fake training. Some organisers smuggled their ‘clients’ abroad, bypassing checkpoints.

In Kharkiv, the Security Service, in conjunction with the State Bureau of Investigation, exposed an official at the headquarters of one of the National Guard battalions who, for USD 8,000, had fictitiously arranged for conscripts to be employed at a construction company with the status of a critical infrastructure facility.

Once ‘employed’, the evaders hoped to travel abroad unhindered under the pretext of work trips.

Also in the Kharkiv region, the SSU detained a psychiatrist – the former head of the local branch of the now-disbanded Medical and Social Examination Commission – who was selling certificates of ‘unfitness’ for service to draft dodgers on the basis of fabricated mental illnesses.

In addition, the suspect advised ‘clients’ on how to feign mental disorders and intellectual disability during medical examinations.

To carry out the scheme, the suspect utilised his connections at the district Territorial Recruitment Centre and also enlisted the help of acquaintances who were members of the expert team assessing an individual’s daily functioning (the former Medical and Social Examination Commission).

In the Kirovohrad region, the SSU and the National Police detained the Head of a department at a local university who, in exchange for bribes, enrolled draft dodgers in a bogus postgraduate programme, enabling them to subsequently obtain a deferment from military service.

Such a ‘service’ cost USD 5,000.

In the Vinnytsia region, the SSU, in cooperation with the National Police, exposed a further four organisers of a network illegally smuggling draft evaders out of Ukraine, bypassing checkpoints.

For USD 12,000, the traffickers would escort conscripts to the state border in their own cars and then show them routes for illegally crossing the river by swimming.

The SSU caught the suspects ‘red-handed’ whilst they were receiving a further bribe.

All those detained have now been notified of their status as suspects under several Articles of the CCU:

• 332.3 (illegal smuggling of persons across the state border of Ukraine);
• 369-2.3 (abuse of influence combined with the extortion of an unlawful benefit);
• 368.3 (receipt of an unlawful benefit by a public official holding a position of responsibility).

The perpetrators face up to 10 years’ imprisonment with confiscation of property.

The operations were carried out by the SSU Offices in the Kharkiv, Kirovohrad and Vinnytsia regions in conjunction with the State Bureau of Investigation and the National Police, under the procedural supervision of the Prosecutor’s Offices.