Photo: Chernihiv military enlistment office
The Ukrainians who had been stuck in the buffer zone on the Russian-Georgian border and were returned home by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry last week, were immediately taken to the military enlistment offices once back on home soil, one of the men has informed Novaya Gazeta Europe.
The unnamed man said he and the other Ukrainians were flown from Georgia to Moldova, and from there they were taken by bus to Ukraine. The entire group was then taken to the military enlistment office, he told Novaya Gazeta Europe.
He said that he was not allowed to go home and was immediately taken to enlist in the city of Kryvyi Rih, and from there for a medical examination in Dnipro. His relatives were not allowed to visit him. Most of the doctors marked the man as fit to serve, according to paperwork Novaya Europe has seen, though the man insists he has serious health problems.
“I don’t see at all through my right eye. … If I have to go and fight, I will, but at least let me get my affairs in order first,” he told Novaya Europe.
Telegram news channel SOTA highlighted on Sunday other cases of Ukrainians brought home from Georgia being taken from hospital in the southern port city of Odesa to the military enlistment office.
The Ukrainians in question were mostly former prisoners who had been deported from Russia after serving their sentences and were left at the Georgian border, where they got stuck in legal limbo as Georgian border guards refused to let them into the country without proper documentation.
About 100 Ukrainians in all ended up stuck at the Verkhny Lars border crossing in recent months, where they were made to live in a basement in the buffer zone. They repeatedly staged protests, threatened to commit suicide, and went on hunger strike.
On Friday, the Ukrainian authorities reported that they had brought 65 of their citizens stuck on the border back to Ukraine. The 65 included 10 women and eight people who were seriously ill. Some 25 Ukrainians remain in the basement on the Georgian border, according to Telegram news channel Tbilisi Life.