"Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeastern Ukraine, at 8:48 P.M. the night before. About sixteen hours later, after travelling more than five hundred miles, it made a stop in Lviv, where I boarded. Milchenko and I were both bound for Poland. I was going to Kraków, on a hastily planned vacation. Milchenko was en route to Wrocław, where his mother lives. I planned to return to Ukraine in ten days. Milchenko didn't know if he would ever go back."
"When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian government barred nearly all men between the ages of eighteen and sixty from leaving the country. This year, on August 28th, it lifted the ban for men under the age of twenty-three. Milchenko was twenty-two-he was on the train that day because he wanted to get out while he legally still could."
"Never mind that the current age for draft eligibility in Ukraine is twenty-five. The government had already lowered the age once, in April of 2024. Who's to say it won't lower it again? Not wanting to wait to find out-and, in the meantime, risk being killed by a drone or missile in one of Russia's frequent attacks on Ukrainian cities-Milchenko decided to leave. He told me that he didn't feel guilty about it."
A policy change allowing men under 23 to leave Ukraine produced an exodus of young men seeking safety and certainty. The government initially barred nearly all men aged eighteen to sixty from leaving after Russia's February 2022 invasion, then lifted the restriction for those under twenty-three on August 28. Many men departed immediately to avoid potential future lowering of the permitted age and to escape frequent drone and missile attacks. Some migrants, including a twenty-two-year-old named Klim Milchenko, left for Poland to join family and expressed little guilt about seeking survival.
Read at The New Yorker
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