The Security Service, the State Bureau of Investigations and the National Police have blocked seven new mobilisation evasion schemes in several regions of Ukraine.

Eighteen organisers of these schemes have been detained; they offered conscripts the chance to evade military service and leave Ukraine.

In Kyiv, the SSU and the State Bureau of Investigations exposed the commander of one of the military units and five of his accomplices, who had organised fictitious enrolment of draft evaders into military service.

It was established that the officer assigned them to posts as riflemen, electricians and drivers without them actually being present at the units’ premises.

In return, the ‘conscripts’ were required to pay the organiser of the scheme between UAH 20,000 and 50,000 each per month.

In the Chernivtsi region, a pastor of a Protestant church of the Kyiv region was exposed for smuggling draft dodgers into a neighbouring EU country for EUR 7,500.

The suspect involved a female parishioner and a deacon in the criminal scheme; they sought out individuals to evade mobilisation and also secretly removed men who had already been mobilised from military units.

The pastor drove them to the border in his own car and instructed on how to cross it on foot evading official border crossing points.

In the Prykarpattia region, an employee of the district Territorial Recruitment Centre was detained; for USD 6,500, he guaranteed servicemen a transfer to rear units on the grounds of ‘poor’ health.

To this end, the perpetrator promised to enlist the help of acquaintances on the military medical commission, who were to falsify medical documents.

In the Kherson region, the head of a village council and two managers of housing and utilities enterprises have been detained; they had fictitiously employed draft dodgers, ‘reserving’ them from conscription.

Once the paperwork was complete, the perpetrators collected the wages of at least 11 fictitiously employed individuals. The total amount of funds illegally obtained by the officials is over UAH 1.2 mln.

In the Cherkasy region, the chair and a member of the medical advisory commission were exposed for assigning fictitious disability categories to relatives of those liable for military service.

In this way, the evaders could obtain the status of carers and travel abroad under the pretext of accompanying their disabled family members for medical treatment. The indictment against both suspects has been sent to court.

In the Lviv region, a nurse from one of the hospitals in the Sheptytskyi district has been detained; she accepted bribes to help conscripts obtain disability status.

In the Vinnytsia region, the SSU exposed two further organisers, one of whom is a foreign national.

The traffickers sought out potential ‘clients’, whom they promised to take to the Odesa region and, from there, smuggle abroad, bypassing border crossing points.

The organisers of the illegal schemes have now been served with notices of suspicion under several Articles of the CCU, according to offences committed:

• 364.2 (abuse of authority or official position resulting in serious consequences);
• 27.3, 409.4 (evasion by a military serviceman of his military service duties by self-mutilation or by feigning illness, forging documents or other deception, committed under martial law, by a group, by prior conspiracy);
• 332.3 (unlawful smuggling of persons across the state border of Ukraine);
• 368.3 (acceptance of a proposal, promise or receipt of an unlawful benefit by a public official);
• 366.1 (forgery in the course of official duties);
• 27.5, 408.4 (desertion);
• 191.5 (misappropriation, embezzlement or acquisition of property through abuse of official position, committed on a particularly large scale or by an organised group);
• 114-1.1 (obstruction of the lawful activities of the AFU, during a state of emergency).

The perpetrators face up to 12 years’ imprisonment with confiscation of property.

The operations were carried out jointly with the State Border Guard Service, the Military Law Enforcement Service and under the procedural supervision of the Prosecutor’s Offices.