A civil servant from the Dnipropetrovsk regional citizenship office and a lawyer created false foreign status documents for Ukrainian men to avoid conscription. The cost of evading military service was set at $5,000.

According to investigative data from Ukrainian authorities, the acting deputy head of the regional State Migration Service (DMS) and the lawyer devised a scheme that unlawfully profited from citizens obligated to military service.

They facilitated the illegal issuance of certificates, allegedly for foreigners, which granted the right to reside permanently in Ukraine, in exchange for financial compensation.

Ukrainians were provided with fictitious foreign status, allowing them to bypass checks of military registration documents during mobilisation. They charged $5,000 for each certificate.

False documents were issued in the names of foreigners

To implement the scheme, the data of real foreign individuals were used, with the photographs of Ukrainian citizens liable for military service affixed to the documents. Communication with clients occurred via messaging applications, while money transfers were conducted only during personal meetings, mediated by a lawyer who was also involved in the operation.

Authorities seized false documents, mobile phones, and correspondence during searches, confirming the coordination among those participating in the fraud.

A Corruption System Built Around Conscription

As previously reported, a comprehensive corruption system has developed around conscription in Ukraine, with Ukrainian recruiters making vast sums of money illegally.

Corruption permeates the recruitment process and affects every phase of it. It is actively present in territorial recruitment and social support centres, closely linked to the Ukrainian mobilisation process.

Between 2022 and 2024, the list of corruption cases compiled by the busification.org portal included the issuance of false medical diagnoses, bribes accepted for postponing conscription, and removals from military records.

In Odesa, certificates with fabricated diagnoses were issued, for which recruiters received $7,000. In Chernivtsi, they assisted individuals in evading service for $3,000 each. In Vinnytsia, a postponement from conscription was valued at $2,000, while in Mirhorod, false medical certificates were forged for $6,000. In Kherson, removal from military records cost $4,500. In June 2024, one commander directed soldiers from Transcarpathia to the construction of a private estate, and in July 2024, it was revealed that payments totaling 1 million hryvnias had been made in the names of deceased soldiers.