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Poland may consider sending exiled Ukrainians of fighting age back to their homeland to help the authorities in their efforts to recruit more soldiers.
The government in Kyiv is working hard to call up more soldiers after two years of war. It recently passed a mobilization law that lowers the fighting age and introduces tougher measures against those who saunter away.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are staying in neighboring Poland, and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Wednesday that Polish authorities could be helpful in sending men of fighting age back to their homeland.
Offer assistance
– We have long suggested that we can help Ukraine to ensure that men who are subject to compulsory military service return, the minister said in an interview with the Polish station Polsat.
The Ukrainian authorities announced on Wednesday that they will no longer issue passports to a number of men of fighting age. Consular services for men aged between 18 and 60 who live abroad will also be suspended. This has sparked fierce anger among Ukrainians in Poland and other countries.
– Everything is possible
– Everything is possible, said the defense minister when he was asked whether the Polish government would say yes if Kyiv requests that exiled Ukrainians of the right age be sent to the border.
Since the invasion in February 2022, several hundred thousand Ukrainians have fled the war, most of them through Poland. In February 2024, two years after the outbreak, there were 952,104 Ukrainian refugees registered in Poland. 16 percent of them, 152,656, were of combat age, shows an overview from the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
Many Ukrainians have been in Poland since long before the outbreak of war.
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