Long story short - I have slightly more than a year left before I’m legally required to serve in the Ukrainian military, not that it matters that much since they grab people off the streets anyway, but it will be an even bigger problem since I will officially have no “excuse” not to serve and will have to hide or escape before then, and it doesn’t look like the war will end for the next god knows how many years. Has anyone here draft-dodged or escaped their country in a similar manner before? If so, any advice on how to do so?
I wouldn’t lose hope regarding the war ending. It’s hard to predict of course, but it seems that Russian advance has accelerated significantly in the past few months. There are a lot of signs that the AFU isn’t able to hold things together now, and that could mean that a general collapse could happen in the near future. There is also a financial crisis unfolding in Europe which could affect material support from the west. I don’t want to give you false hope here, but it’s not going to be slow incremental progress happening indefinitely. Eventually an inflection point is reached when the army is no longer able to put up organized resistance. This happened with the Germans in WW2 as well. The front was relatively static for years, but once the collapse started, Red Army made it to Berlin in a matter of months.
Thank you, and don’t worry, you’re not giving me any false hopes - I and many of us here have heard enough “the war is ending soon!!” to have a strong sense of hope for that anymore. When the war ends it’ll surprise us, not cause nobody expects it to end but cause many of us can’t imagine not living in this regime anymore.
When the end of this nightmare comes, you’ll suddenly have to remember what normal feels like. Till then, don’t lose hope.