Amid such an acute labor shortage, the Ukrainian government’s decision to give thousands of young men the opportunity to go abroad has divided military experts. Zelensky defended the new travel rule, saying it would help deter young men from leaving even earlier. “If we want to keep Ukrainian boys in Ukraine, then we need them to finish their studies here, and parents should not take them abroad,” he said at a press briefing after the rule took effect. “But they start taking them abroad before they graduate. And that’s very serious, because at that point they lose all connection with Ukraine.” He added that this change would have no impact on the country’s defense capabilities. Simon Schlegel, director of the Ukraine program at the Center for Liberal Modernity in Berlin, told me that while that may be true for now, the new rule could lead to problems in the future. “This reduces the mobilization pool for three years, when these men become eligible,” he said.
The new rule was also criticized by some of Ukraine’s closest partners. In a phone call on November 13, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz asked Zelensky to do something to prevent so many young Ukrainians from coming to Germany. They should “serve their country,” Merz said after the call, although he may also be thinking of his own country. Although figures vary, the number of Ukrainian men aged eighteen to twenty-two entering Germany increased from nineteen per week in mid-August to between fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred per week in October, according to the German Interior Ministry. (Since the start of the war, Germany has granted so-called temporary protection to more than 1.2 million Ukrainians, the most of any country in the European Union.) Poland has also seen a large influx of Ukrainian men in the same age bracket — more than a hundred and twenty-one thousand since the end of August, according to Polish border guards, compared with about thirty-four thousand in the previous eight months. Many of these men will pass through Poland on their way elsewhere, but others, like Milchenko, have decided to stay. “I feel like I’m starting a new life,” he said.
At the beginning of November, I went to visit Milchenko in Wrocław. We met at a cafe opposite a KFC in the city’s Old Town. A bronze statue of a gnome, one of more than eleven hundred scattered throughout the city, stood out front. Milchenko, who is tall and thin, with short light brown hair, wore a black sweater, gray jeans and sneakers. He was barely more relaxed than he had been on the train. Sipping a pumpkin spice latte, he told me that he had spent much of his time since arriving in Wrocław looking for work. “I sent my resume to thirty different places,” he said. “So far I’ve only heard from one pool. I told them I worked as a lifeguard in kyiv and was certified, but they said they wanted someone else.”
Milchenko speculated that the pool was looking for someone older or a native Pole. He had heard stories of Ukrainians in Poland facing discrimination and worse. In September, someone spray-painted “forward” the hood of a Ukrainian woman’s car, and a thirty-two-year-old Polish man was accused of shooting and seriously injuring a Romanian he thought was Ukrainian. Both incidents occurred in Wrocław. Nationally, polls show public support for welcoming Ukrainian refugees is slowly but steadily declining. It is currently at its lowest level since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, has pledged to tighten restrictions on the government support they receive, and the far-right Confederation Party has accused Ukrainian men who moved to Poland of “passing on Polish taxpayers the cost of their desertion.” (A study by the National Development Bank of Poland found that Ukrainians actually pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits.)
