The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has liquidated three more corruption networks that helped men evade military service in exchange for payments of between 5,000 and 12,000 dollars, the service said on Tuesday, reports EFE.

“In exchange for certain sums of money, they helped potential recruits to leave for the European Union with false documents and thus evade mobilization,” the SBU statement says, according to Agerpres.

According to the martial law adopted at the beginning of the Russian invasion, men between the ages of 18 and 60 who are fit to serve in the army are prohibited from leaving the country. Only those with valid medical or family reasons can be exempted from registration, as well as those working in civilian areas considered strategic.

Among those detained in the new operation is the head of the regional recruitment center in the Lviv region. Those who gave the necessary bribes, he helped to leave the country under the pretext that they were military drivers carrying international humanitarian transports.

Another network operated in the south of Odesa and offered those who wished to evade mobilization with the help of false medical certificates to prove their physical inability to act at the front. The third network operated in the same way, in the city of Dnipro in the central part of Ukraine and relatively close to the front line.

An unspecified number of military commissar employees operated in these corruption networks.

Zelensky dismissed all the heads of the country’s military commissariats

At the beginning of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian army took advantage of the influx of volunteers willing to fight, but losses at the front forced the authorities to resort to mobilization more and more often.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired all the heads of the country’s military commissariats in August in an effort to eliminate a vast corruption system that allows eligible men to evade the draft by offering money. Since then, the Ukrainian special services have eliminated numerous corruption networks in the army recruitment system.

The parliament in Kyiv has been discussing new forms of recruitment for several months, aimed at reducing corruption in this system and enabling the demobilization of those who fought at the front after the start of the war with Russia last February.

At the end of October, wives and other family members of Ukrainian soldiers sent to the front in the war with Russia took part in demonstrations in Kyiv, Odesa and other cities of Ukraine demanding their demobilization after 18 months of military service.

Zelensky wants changes in the mobilization system

On Friday, President Zelenskyy called for a change in the mobilization system as part of the strategy to improve the situation in the army after 21 months of war.

“It’s not just about the number of people who can be mobilized. It is about a certain deadline for each person who is currently in the army so that they can demobilize and for those who will join the army. And it’s all about the conditions,” Zelenskyy explained after a meeting of the army command, at which, according to him, the scenarios of “concrete results” for 2024 in the conditions of war were discussed.

Since Russia launched a war against Ukraine last February, Ukrainian border guards have stopped about 20,000 men, most of them at the border with Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Others drowned in the Tisza River or died from the cold in the Carpathians.

According to Eurostat data, during this time more than 650 thousand Ukrainian men aged 18 to 64 are registered as refugees in 27 EU countries, as well as in Switzerland, Norway and Liechtenstein.