Some 23,500 Ukrainian men have entered Moldova illegally since the start of Russia's unprovoked invasion in February 2022, according to data seen by RFE/RL's Moldovan Service.
While some 15,000 men aged 18-59 arrived illegally in Moldova from February 2022 until the end of last year, the trend accelerated substantially after Ukrainian authorities in April lowered the mobilization age from 27 to 25 years amid an increasingly acute shortage of military personnel caused by battlefield losses.
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Moldovan frontier police data show that more than 7,700 Ukrainian men crossed illegally into Moldova in the first five months of this year.
Moldova and Ukraine share a 1,222-kilometer-long border and Chisinau, under pro-Western President Maia Sandu, has offered shelter to thousands of Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, but also men, on its territory.
Ukrainian authorities have admitted that the high number of losses and the frontline impasse have dampened the patriotic enthusiasm of the first months of the war, which saw the Ukrainian Army grow from 260,000 people to 700,000.
Mobilization efforts are running into obstacles, as many able-bodied men go into hiding to avoid increasingly frequent checkups on the streets and on the public transport of Ukraine's cities.
Moldovan legislation provides for four types of protection for foreigners: refugee status, humanitarian protection, political asylum, and temporary protection, introduced in March last year.
In the first 14 months since the introduction of the temporary protection status, official data shows, nearly 12,800 Ukrainians have benefited from it.
Moldovan Frontier Police chief Ruslan Galusca, in a reply to RFE/RL, said that Ukrainians who are detained immediately after illegally crossing the border with Moldova or who officially ask for international protection at a police precinct "are not sanctioned for illegal entry."
In February, Moldova's western neighbor, EU member Romania, which shares a 600-kilometer-long border with Ukraine, reported that some 9,000 Ukrainians crossed its border illegally in the first two years of war.
Many of the Ukrainians crossing illegally into Moldova do so with the intention of continuing their journey to European Union countries. Neither Moldova nor Ukraine is a member of the bloc, although both of them have started accession negotiations with Brussels.
Moldovan police, increasingly concerned by the proliferation of human trafficking networks, have been making efforts to debrief the runaways about who helped them cross the border.
Vasyl, a Ukrainian man who arrived in Moldova in April and is heading to Poland, told RFE/RL that he paid $10,000 to traffickers who brought him across the Dniester River into Moldova aboard a speedboat.
"I am not fleeing because I do not love Ukraine. I am fleeing from death. It hurts to see people dying in my country, and I do not want to be next," he said.