A "fair" decision. That's how Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba justified the order, issued on Tuesday, April 23, to temporarily suspend all consular services for Ukrainians old enough to serve in the army. The country, which is desperately short of soldiers for combat, will no longer issue passports to men aged 18 to 60 exiled abroad, with a few exceptions. Only "identity cards for re-entry into Ukraine" will continue to be issued.

"This decision is purely political," ranted Vlodymyr Dovhan, a computer scientist we met outside the Ukrainian consulate in Warsaw. Having arrived in Poland with his wife and daughter on February 23, 2022, on the eve of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian believes that "this is not going to bring back Ukrainians living in Poland. My daughter already speaks Polish and feels at home here. As for me, I've set up my own business here."

The announced restrictions, the details of which are still unclear, are designed to prevent Ukrainians from "evading the obligation to deal with the issue of military registration," according to Kyiv. A way of putting pressure on the tens of thousands of men who fled the country after the Russian attack, to encourage them to return and take part in the war effort.

"Under the circumstances of Russia's full-scale aggression, the main priority is to protect our homeland from destruction," was how Kuleba justified the measure. "What it looks like now: a man of conscription age went abroad, showed his country that he does not care about its survival, and then comes and wants to receive services from this government. It does not work this way. Our country is at war (...) Staying abroad does not relieve a citizen of his or her duties to the homeland."

The ban is due to continue until the provisions of the mobilization act, which comes into force on Saturday, May 18, have been clarified. The law aims to toughen punishments for draft dodgers and lowers the mobilization age from 27 to 25. The suspension of consular services does not apply to people already authorized to cross the border under certain exceptions, such as disability or accompanying orphans.

'I've got nowhere to go back to'

The measure is causing a wave of concern and anger. In Poland, hundreds of Ukrainians rushed to the consulate. A technical incident on the same day added to the panic. "The Ukrainian foreign affairs ministry said that consular services would be available again to those who had updated their military information," Oksana Pestrykova, coordinator of the support center of The Ukrainian House in Warsaw, an NGO helping Ukrainians in the diaspora, told Le Monde. "But Ukrainians in Poland fear that once this information has been transmitted, they will receive documents obliging them to join the army."

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