Ukraine tightens exemption from military service for medical reasons

Conscripts with mild mental illness, HIV status, or hepatitis will no longer be allowed to miss military service. Photo: Pavel Palamarchuk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Ukraine has limited the number of medical exemptions that allow men to avoid being drafted into the army.

Kyiv will no longer allow conscripts with mild mental disorders, HIV+ status or hepatitis to refuse military service.

The Ministry of Defense issued a decree, first reported by Ukraine Military Pages on Sunday, after President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized corruption in the military exemption system.

Other conditions delisted include curable tuberculosis, slowly progressive blood diseases and mild thyroid diseases.

About 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the war so far, and Kiev has stepped up its recruiting efforts as its army seeks a decisive breakthrough on the Southern Front.

Last week, he announced a nationwide review of all medical exemptions issued since the invasion began.

< img src= "/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/4f88f8c7990be929832d18a1fd7f8be7.jpg" />President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticized corruption in the medical exemption system from military service. Photo: AFP

A significant number of Ukrainian men are believed to have left the country illegally since the start of the war, and the leader of the majority in parliament this week said Kiev could ask neighboring countries to help bring them back.

But Fedor Venislavsky, Zelensky’s representative in parliament , on Tuesday dismissed the idea, saying there was no legal basis for a «massive extradition of citizens.»

In addition, on Tuesday, Ukraine's special service, the SBU, said that there were no legal grounds for «large-scale extradition of citizens.» thwarted five separate criminal schemes in the west of the country to help draft evaders.

In the most complex of the five schemes, a criminal gang in the northwestern city of Rivne set up a front company posing as an exporter of agricultural products. Draft evaders then received travel exemptions as company executives who needed to travel abroad for high-level negotiations on the export of Ukrainian grain.

In Ternopil, in the west, an employee of the local military enlistment office presented young men with the equivalent of 1,500 pounds sterling to avoid being drafted, as he promised that they would be officially enrolled in a college that provided benefits.

In Ivano-Frankivsk, another western region, police arrested two local men who were seeing off conscripts . — evading all-terrain vehicles through the Carpathians to Romania, bypassing border control.

If found guilty, the suspects face up to nine years in prison.