Ukrainian ombudsman alleges corrupt draft officials charge up to $70,000 to smuggle men out of the country to evade mobilization

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s parliamentary human rights commissioner, told the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda about new corruption schemes at TRCs. Staff at the centers have begun offering a “turnkey” service, he said: for $50,000-70,000, a person can be smuggled off a bus and out of the country.

Lubinets stressed that the information is still being verified and has not been officially confirmed. Corruption cases are most often uncovered in the Zakarpattia region, he said, and are rare in places like Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv. “It’s the same with attacks on TRCs: the farther from the front, the more often it happens,” he said.

Lubinets had previously said that TRC staff could demand $10,000 to let someone off the bus — and twice that amount to let them leave the TRC building altogether. Those figures have surfaced repeatedly in complaints about mobilization abuses. Even after paying, he stressed, a person gets no guarantees and could be detained again the very next day.

By Lubinets’s estimate, only 2% of all mobilized individuals reach the front each month. He also confirmed that, until recently, the position of TRC director cost an average of $50,000. The situation has been improving, he said, since Mykhailo Drapatyi took over as commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Lubinets also addressed remarks by former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov about the need to hold elections in Ukraine, saying that would be impossible without a ceasefire, in part because “the Constitution directly prohibits” it.

“We need to understand that this war is going to last a long time,” Lubinets said. “And even a ceasefire won’t mean the war is over. Take off your rose-colored glasses already.”

This isn’t the first time Dmytro Lubinets has spoken openly about mobilization abuses in Ukraine. Some human rights activists believe he’s using anti-mobilization rhetoric as a political springboard, according to Ukrainska Pravda. Lubinets himself has said he’d support a proposal barring the human rights commissioner from running for political office for a set period after leaving the post.