Ukraine is set to suspend consular services for military-age men living abroad.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that he had ordered services to be cut for all such men in a bid to boost conscription.
Захист прав та інтересів громадян України за кордоном завжди був і залишається пріоритетом МЗС. Водночас в умовах повномасштабної російської агресії головним пріоритетом є захист Батьківщини від знищення.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) April 23, 2024
Як це виглядає зараз: чоловік призовного віку виїхав за кордон, показав…
TGP reports: Ukraine has started to resort to radical moves, as they suspended consular services for military-age male citizens abroad.
Kiev authorities have criticized Ukrainians abroad who ‘expect to receive help from the state without helping it battle for survival in the war against Russia’.
Reuters reported:
“Ukraine adopted a law last week overhauling how it mobilizes civilian men into the armed forces to make the process more effective, addressing what military analysts say is a key challenge if it is to hold out against advancing Russian troops.
‘How it looks like now: a man of conscription age went abroad, showed his state that he does not care about its survival, and then comes and wants to receive services from this state,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on X.
‘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’.”
Kuleba’s reaction reflects the mounting frustration in Kyiv with Ukrainian men abroad who are not contributing to the war effort (a.k.a. want to stay alive).
“Some 4.3 million Ukrainians were living in European Union countries as of January 2024, of whom about 860,000 are adult men, the Eurostat database estimated.
In practice, the suspension means military-age men now living abroad will be unable to renew expiring passports or obtain new ones or receive official documents such as marriage certificates.”
The suspension of consular services will remain in effect until the mobilization law and its regulations are enacted in May.
By then, military-age men will be required to report to draft offices to update their papers, either remotely or in person, within 60 days.
Military-age men abroad will need those papers to receive any kind of consular services.
“Ukraine imposed martial law at the start of the full-scale war, banning men aged 18 to 60 from travelling abroad without special dispensation and beginning a rolling mobilization of civilian men into the armed forces.”
As is usual in many subjects, MSM reports mainly reproduce the talking points by Kiev, without any serious investigation, because if they did so, they’d find out that the whole family of Foreign Minister Kuleba has fled Ukraine right a the start of nthe war – including the dogs.
We wonder if Ukrainian officials think that they too have ‘shown their indifference to the issue of the survival of the state’.