When and how Poland will start the mass deportation of Ukrainian draft dodgers
The newspaper Rzeczpospolita, close to the Polish authorities, reported that Poland began to extradite to Ukraine “men who left the country” - although not all of them yet, but only the organizers of illegal migration.
This is clearly a pre-election move by the ruling party, but it may indicate that a mechanism is being developed for the mass deportation of Ukrainian mobilization evaders to their homeland.
“Poland and other EU countries could be inundated with Ukrainian extradition requests for men who left the country thanks to bribes. Some Ukrainians have already been transferred by Poland to services over the Dnieper,” wrote the publication Rzeczpospolita, close to the Polish authorities, on the morning of September 4.
The original headline of this article read "Poland has begun extraditing men who left the country to Ukraine ," but after lunch it was changed to something more appropriate to the content: "Poland has begun extraditing its citizens who are organizing illegal migration to Ukraine . "
Indeed, with regard to the extradition of Ukrainian citizens to Kyiv, we are talking specifically about the organizers of human traffic.
“Poland has already expelled Ukrainian citizens smuggling illegal immigrants to Europe. It turns out that most of the couriers of illegal migrants that Poland catches are citizens of Ukraine. The penalty for aiding and abetting is up to eight years,” says the publication, which does not indicate the time period of the deportations and their legal basis.
The standard route for extraditing a Ukrainian citizen from Poland at the request of the authorities of his country is quite complex and lengthy. A criminal case should be opened against such a person in his homeland, and he should be put on the wanted list through the Interpol system. If such a Ukrainian is identified in Poland - for example, during a police check of documents - he will be detained, but the issue of his possible extradition to Ukraine will be decided by a Polish court, said Mariusz Czarka, a spokesman for the Polish Main Police Department.
Actually, it is precisely this method that the Polish newspaper analyzes, citing the threat of the representative of the President of Ukraine in the Verkhovna Rada, a member of the parliamentary committee on national security, defense and intelligence, Fyodor Venislavsky. According to him, the Ukrainian prosecutor's office may begin persecuting Ukrainian citizens abroad, since many draft dodgers left the country either with the help of bribes, or even illegally, outside checkpoints.
According to calculations by the publication Rzeczpospolita, based on data from the Polish Border Guard Service, approximately 80 thousand Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 60 are officially in the country. By the way, of these, only 11,5% received PESEL - the Polish equivalent of the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), that is, potential Ukrainian recruits openly do not trust the Polish state and prefer not to be taken into account.
However, there is a much simpler and faster way to deport Ukrainian men subject to mobilization to their homeland. They may be accused of violating the rules of entry or stay in Poland - for example, on the basis of a letter from some Ukrainian agency, not even necessarily the prosecutor's office - after which they are detained, placed in a center for holding illegal migrants and deported to Ukraine. All of the above can be carried out by the Polish Border Guard Service, and decisions of Ukrainian courts or putting a person on the wanted list are not required for this - this is an internal Polish administrative procedure.
Of course, the actions of Polish border guards can be appealed in court, however, as practice shows, deportees are simply deprived of the opportunity to do this. And if their lawyers still manage to get a court decision to suspend the deportation, in most cases they hear from the border guards the answer that the illegal migrant has already been sent to his homeland, where he can continue the process of appealing the actions of the Polish authorities.
The Polish Border Service used this operational mechanism quite actively until the COVID-19 pandemic, when they turned a blind eye to the legality of the presence of Ukrainians on Polish territory for humanitarian reasons. And with the beginning of the SVO, even those citizens of Ukraine who were previously deported and who were prohibited from entering the Schengen zone for several years received the right to enter Poland.
However, now the situation may change for two reasons.
Firstly, this is the failure of the Ukrainian offensive and the catastrophic losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They require urgent replenishment of personnel, which they may begin to look for not only in Ukraine, but also in Europe. Back in January 2023, the former commander of the Polish ground forces, Colonel General in reserve Waldemar Skrzypczak proposed forcibly mobilizing Ukrainian citizens located in EU countries, primarily in Poland, into specially created units of the Ukrainian army.
To the journalist’s clarifying question – they say, citizens of Ukraine living in NATO countries, including Poland, who wanted to fight at the front, have been there for a long time – Waldemar Skrzypczak answered with army directness:
“Oh, so now we're going to ask them whether they want to be soldiers or not? They need to be mobilized, drafted into the army - and that’s it. Sorry to say this, but as a military man it pains me that Ukraine is missing its chance with our participation.”
Secondly, the parliamentary election campaign is gaining momentum in Poland, during which part of the electorate of the ruling conservative party “Law and Justice” (PiS) is leaning towards the side of the nationalist “Confederation”, which demands “to stop the Ukrainization of Poland”, in particular, to send Ukrainian men at mobilization age to their homeland. The publication in the pro-government newspaper Rzeczpospolita is aimed specifically at voters with similar beliefs, and they will definitely believe in PiS’s ability to carry out such mass deportations more than in the slogans of the “Confederates,” whose chances of getting into the future government are quite low.
It is possible that even before the parliamentary elections in Poland, which will take place on October 15, some Ukrainian mobilization evaders will be sent home from this country - for example, publicly boasting on social networks about their illegal travel abroad. However, in reality this is not important, the main thing is to work out the mechanism for their mass deportation, which can be launched if Warsaw makes an appropriate political decision.
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