On an air mattress and in a box: how they illegally cross the border of Ukraine

“I covered my husband’s legs with diapers”

The State Border Service of Ukraine announced the detention of a Russian who sailed to Nezalezhnaya on an air mattress across the Western Bug. What the man who lived there earlier was looking for now in Ukraine remains unknown, but the number of illegal immigrants who want to cross the border in both directions, and more, of course, to leave, is steadily growing.

The main reason for leaving is mobilization in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Therefore, mostly men run. According to Ukrainian border guards, over the past 2022, the number of detected illegal border crossings has more than doubled. Back in October, they reported the arrest of more than 10,000 conscripts who tried to escape.

Services for issuing fake documents allowing passage through the border checkpoint are quite expensive and not always reliable. For example, to issue a “white ticket” in Ukraine costs up to 15 thousand dollars, while no one guarantees the quality of the document. At the Mogilev-Podolsky checkpoint, the border guards refused to allow the man to leave the country, because his document indicated that he was unfit for military service due to a “complicated pregnancy”.

At the same time, the services of guides for illegal exit from Ukraine, bypassing border posts, are in demand. In Transcarpathia, in early January, border guards detained a 55-year-old Kharkiv resident who at night tried to cross the Tisza River with the help of a local ferryman hired by him, from which border guards regularly catch either living or already dead Ukrainians. To “force” the water barrier, the Transcarpathian provided the Kharkiv resident with a wetsuit for three thousand dollars. Diving failed – the men were caught red-handed 600 meters from the border.

In Moldova, a 24-year-old Ukrainian was detained with local guides. From the border guards, the fugitive, leaving the car, was hiding in the bushes with a bag containing 3 thousand dollars and documents.

Poorer citizens cannot afford such unbearable expenses, so they try to cope on their own, which often turns into a comedy. So, in the Odessa region, a Ukrainian dressed as a woman was detained, who presumptuously decided to leave for Moldova in his own Zhiguli. “Transvestite involuntarily” did not provide for one thing – all things in the car were men’s, which caused questions from the security forces.

On the border with Moldova, at the Rossoshany checkpoint, a Ukrainian woman with two children tried to take her husband out, who was hiding in a box of toys. Such spacious cardboard boxes, also known as “baby boxes”, are given out at the birth of a child. For the hidden placement of an adult healthy man, it was still necessary to cut out the bottom where he could stick his legs. So that they could not be seen, the salon was bombarded with packages of diapers.

Often, Ukrainian women try to take their spouses out in less intricate ways – just in the trunk. In March, a Ukrainian woman was detained on the border with Hungary, who hid her 50-year-old husband under a bunch of bags of belongings.

Someone was not at all inventive. The day before, on January 16, on the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, border guards found a Ukrainian in the car of a 19-year-old girl hiding in the back seat under a blanket. An acquaintance of the girl in his full 32 years apparently believed that the veil was magical, and under it he would become invisible.

Now he, like many other unfortunate fugitives, is threatened with a guaranteed draft into the Ukrainian army, and the girl, as an accomplice, is in prison …