ANTHONY LOYD | DISPATCH FROM UKRAINE
Ukraine draft dodgers dream up extreme ways to avoid the front
The country is struggling to keep morale up and fill the gaps in the army
Ukrainian civilians and the military remain largely committed to President Zelensky’s aim of driving Russian forces out of the country, but the fighting is taking its toll
The Times
The first wound Andrii suffered was a shot in the shoulder fired by a Russian infantryman in eastern Ukraine last spring. The second came minutes later, as the 20-year-old sergeant lay writhing in pain in the mud: he was hit in the back by shrapnel from an exploding Russian shell.
If he is ever wounded again, he says, it will probably be by his own hand.
“I am absolutely ready to shoot myself in the leg rather than ever go back to the front,” said Andrii, who deserted from his unit after he was discharged from hospital with bullet fragments in his left shoulder and ordered to return to the front.
Ukrainians are encouraged to join up and fight for their country
ALAMY
“I was a contract soldier, a professional,” he said from his refuge in Lviv,
