As Ukraine’s military is struggling to refill its ranks, Kyiv wants to mobilise men living abroad. The Estonian interior minister has suggested that he would help help find Ukrainians living in the country to be mobilised. Lithuania, meanwhile, has not yet made up its mind at this point.
The Ukrainian government says that the soldiers fighting against the Russian invasion are tired and need replacements. These could come from Ukrainian citizens who have been given legal protection abroad. According to Eurostat, over 650,000 Ukrainian men are registered as refugees in the EU, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Kyiv would like men between the age of 25 and 60 to return and join the war effort.
Temporary legal protection prevents EU governments from repatriating Ukrainian refugees back to their country in order to be sent to the front.
However, some in Lithuania believe that Ukrainian men of military service age should be sent to Ukraine.
“If we support Ukraine with weapons and financial assistance, if we specifically provide shelter for their family members, children, elderly people, then we have to help the Ukrainian government to achieve its mobilisation goals,” says MP Dainius Gaižauskas, deputy chairman of the National Security and Defence Committee.
Valentyn Nefedov has been living in Europe for five years, two of them in Lithuania. Currently a student at Vilnius University, he is under 25 and therefore not yet eligible for the army. The Ukrainian thinks that if his compatriots abroad have not yet returned to serve, it is unlikely that they will do so when mobilisation is announced.
“I have friends who lived abroad and returned to Ukraine to join the armed forces. But most of my acquaintances who live abroad are ready to stay here because they have jobs. Some of them already have dual citizenship,” says Nefedov.
In December, Estonia’s Interior Minister Lauri Läänemets said the country would help Ukraine draft men into the army if Kyiv sent the request. However, Prime Minister Kaja Kallas recently walked back on Läänemets’ claims.
“[Ukrainian refugees] have the right to be here if they go under those rules – if they have reached us, then the European Union gives them temporary protection,” Kallas said in an interview with Kyiv Independent last week. “So we will definitely not do anything on our side to give those people out. It is up to Ukraine to really turn to the people who are here and request [that they] come back to help their motherland.”
LRT’s Estonian correspondent Vaidas Matulaiti says the discussion has caused a stir in the Ukrainian community in Estonia, where there are an estimated 7,500 men of draft age.
“As he [the Estonian interior minister] said himself, refusing not to help would be strange and like betraying a partner. And then he explained that, of course, new legal arrangements would have to be made,” Matulaitis said.
Lithuania has not yet made any decisions about what it would do, says Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė, nor has it received any appeals from the Ukrainian government.
“We don’t know what the request would be. Is it to share information, to provide lists?” Bilotaitė says.
Representatives of NGOs say that Lithuania must have a clear position.
“When it comes to the really difficult issues, and this is a difficult issue, the government gets lost,” says Jonas Ohman, who runs the Ukraine support organisation Blue/Yellow.
An estimated 83,000 Ukrainians have come to Lithuania since the start of the Russian invasion, including more than 12,000 men of military age, though it is not clear how many remain in the country.
Ukrainian refugees in Lithuania have to extend their temporary residence permits every year, with the deadline coming on March 4. The Migration Department says interest is sluggish and so far only 29,000 Ukrainians have applied.
“The question is whether this is because they are still slow to think about it [...] or because there are actually far fewer Ukrainian refugees in Lithuania than we thought,” says Evelina Gudzinskaitė, head of the Migration Department.
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