Breakouts and embarrassment

Liberation

On 15 June, the speaker of Ukraine’s border patrol discussed the ‘increasingly brazen’ attempts to cross the border by young men. According to him, many of them aren’t even older than 25, which is the technical lower limit for mobilization. But that isn’t surprising, given that it was only just recently reduced anyway, and as I’ll outline in a coming post, discussion continues to rage about whether it should be decreased further. And anyway, there is no shortage of reports of those younger than 25 being mobilized now either.

The speaker discussed the June 14 case, where a bus carrying 41 people was stopped at the border in the Odessa region. The border patrol in its facebook post on the matter called it a new ‘anti-record’, which beat the 9 February case where a bus with 40 men was stopped (apparently, each paid from $4500-$8000 USD). This time, the men were hiding in a grain transport truck. Criminal charges have been laid against them for violating state borders. Maybe they will be lucky enough to get jailed.

Photos from June 14

Those hoping to escape have all variety of tricks up their sleeves. On June 10, 32 men in a GAZ-66 truck with military plates managed to escape over the border into Hungary.

An example of the GAZ-66. Sturdy Soviet engineering to the rescue as usual.

This case was reported by journalist Vitaliy Glagola. According to him, border patrol were alerted to the incident when they saw heavy military tracks that went through a crumpled section of the border fence.