Nearly four years into the full-scale war, hundreds of thousands of draft-age men have left Ukraine. A smaller wave of emigration was also triggered by the decision allowing men aged 18 to 22 to travel abroad.
Journalists at NGL.media compiled statistics on men leaving the country after Russia’s full-scale invasion. According to their calculations, over four years about 470,000 military-age men exited Ukraine through official checkpoints and did not return, and another 70,000 left illegally.
After the government permitted men aged 18–22 to travel, roughly 78,000 in that age group left Ukraine between September and November 2025.
Reporters noted that Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service does not keep male-specific statistics, so the outlet requested monthly data from the border services of neighboring Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Moldova, and Hungary on crossings by Ukrainian men aged 18–60 from February 24, 2022, to November 2025, as well as data on recorded illegal entries.
They cautioned that these figures do not reflect the exact number of individuals, since each entry and exit is counted separately and the same person may appear multiple times.
Hungary declined to provide statistics.
According to the journalists, nearly 188,000 Ukrainian men aged 18–60 entered Poland during the full-scale war and did not return, including 60,000 males under 22.
Far fewer men traveled to Moldova and Romania overall, and the gap between entries and exits there is 10.6% and 13.7%, respectively.
“The negative balance of Ukrainian migration through these two countries exceeds 342,000 men,” the journalists said.
Slovakia shows an atypical pattern: fewer men enter the country than return from it to Ukraine.
Regarding young men aged 18–22: over the three months the travel permission was in effect, about 78,000 left Ukraine for good.
The authors concluded that, excluding departures to Hungary, around 470,000 men left Ukraine via official checkpoints during the full-scale invasion, and, by conservative estimates, about 70,000 crossed the border illegally.
In total, up to 540,000 conscription-age men may have left Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers allowed men under 22 to travel abroad on August 27. The next day, the first travelers under the new rules appeared at border checkpoints.
On October 2, Alexander Gladun, Doctor of Economics and deputy director for research at the M.V. Ptukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, said that since the start of the full-scale invasion, men have made up nearly 40% of those who left Ukraine because of the war.
On January 14, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said it had uncovered schemes in eight regions involving providers of “services” to evade mobilization and illegally move conscription-age men across the border.
