More than 2 thousand Ukrainian civil servants tried to illegally cross the border of the republic during 2023. This was announced on Friday, October 27, by the speaker of the country’s border service, Andrei Demchenko.

According to the republic’s border service, Ukrainian civil servants tried to leave Ukraine without legal grounds.

“As of now, this number is 2.1 thousand people. They followed without meeting the conditions specified in the rules for crossing the border,” Demchenko told TSN.

He also said that the average number of attempts to illegally leave the country through checkpoints and green sections of the border remains unchanged.

“If we talk about illegal border crossings outside checkpoints, then such attempts have increased slightly,” he added.

On September 5, Demchenko said that Ukrainian border guards daily detain about 20-30 people trying to illegally leave the country. Mostly men of conscription age are detained — from 18 to 60 years old, who are restricted from leaving Ukraine. Earlier that day, columnist Stephen Bryan, in an article for Asia Times, noted that due to significant losses at the front, Ukraine would turn to Europe with a request to return Ukrainians of military age.

On August 15, Demchenko said that in Ukraine, under martial law, more careful control would be established over men of military age leaving the country.

Martial law has been in force in Ukraine since February 2022, at the same time the President of the Republic Vladimir Zelensky signed a law on the general mobilization of citizens, according to which men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country.

The special operation to protect Donbass, the start of which was announced on February 24, 2022, continues. The decision was made against the backdrop of an aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.