‘Not now and not anytime soon’: Ukraine’s 18–22 exit rule sends a wave of young men to Poland and beyond

On a gray December morning in Warsaw, Vadym, a 22-year-old from Chernihiv, stepped off a bus, opened his phone and started calling. Within days, he had a job with a Ukrainian logistics firm operating in Poland. Within weeks, he had a plan.

“As for returning to Ukraine, in my view, not now and not anytime soon after the war ends,” he said. “Now I can only think about what lies beyond its borders.”

Vadym is part of a new, fast-moving cohort: young Ukrainian men allowed to leave during wartime. In August, Ukraine’s government relaxed exit rules for men aged 18 to 22, a striking move in a country where wartime conscription begins at 25 and the military has struggled to recruit younger volunteers since early in the war. The stated aim was to let young men study abroad and bring skills back for postwar rebuilding. The result has been a surge westward.

A rare exit window opens

Poland’s Border Guard said 184,000 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 22 crossed from September through the end of January — a six-fold increase on the same period a year earlier — as the new policy took hold. German officials have also reported higher arrivals in that age bracket. The numbers underline how swiftly the opportunity was seized by those who came of age under bombardment.

Ukraine maintains the change was targeted and temporary, designed to expand study pathways, reduce bottlenecks at universities and ultimately strengthen the talent pool that will be needed to rebuild. But many analysts in Kyiv and abroad also saw a political calculation — an attempt by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government to appeal to younger voters ahead of eventual postwar elections.

Broadly popular among parents and students, the policy is also a gamble: every young man who leaves may not come back, and those who stay behind are watching closely.

Safety, study and the pull of normal life

In Poznan, Maksym, a 21-year-old graphic design student from Kyiv, arrived in January with a tidy plan of his own: find work, enroll in classes in Poland and start building a future farther from sirens and strikes.

“I want to live in safety and Poland is economically convenient for me,” he said. “I’d like to build my future life here. Maybe I’ll return to Ukraine, but it’s hard to tell for now.” Like others his age, he worries that remaining in Ukraine would bring a draft notice at 25. “I don’t really want to fight, unfortunately.”

Four years into full-scale war, with missile and drone attacks mounting, those interviewed cited safety, opportunity and mental strain as drivers of their decisions. “The missile attacks increase. It’s not good [for] me, it’s not good for other people, they’re depressed,” said Vania, a 22-year-old cybersecurity graduate who grew up in occupied Luhansk. “When you’re reading the news, all the time you see how much people die, or something like that. [It’s] not good.”

He moved to Sweden in September, spent three months in a refugee camp in the country’s north and now rents a studio near Stockholm. The immediate goal: find a job.

Backlash in Europe

The visible influx of military-age men in Poland and Germany has fueled a political backlash on the right and far right in both countries. As the uptick became clear last autumn, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder called on Kyiv to restrict the flow. “It helps no one if more and more young Ukrainian men come to Germany instead of defending their homeland,” he said.

Such criticism frames the exodus as a direct drain on Ukraine’s defense. Yet it is hard to fault a generation whose formative years have been shaped by shelling and sudden goodbyes. For many, this window is less escape than a fleeting chance to experience the ordinary rhythms of early adulthood — classes, first jobs, quieter nights — before a possible call-up.

Ukraine’s demographic squeeze

Even before the exit rule changed, Ukraine’s armed forces faced a structural challenge: demography. Conscription starts at 25, but front-line units today often skew older, with many soldiers in their 30s and 40s. Officials say close to 1 million people serve in Ukraine’s armed forces, with roughly 300,000 deployed on front lines. Kyiv maintains that, as part of any eventual peace settlement, it must build a military of about 800,000 — a goal defense analysts say is achievable but complicated.

“Ukraine has been facing certain demographic problems for years now,” said Marcin Jedrysiak, a Ukraine specialist at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw. “This is especially problematic when it comes to young people and the generation of, say, 20-year-olds,” he said, noting a sharp birth-rate trough between 1996 and 2006.

That long slide, combined with wartime casualties and mass displacement, has shrunk the population from about 51 million in the early 1990s to an estimated 28 million to 35 million today. Jedrysiak warned that postwar Ukraine could face “serious social divisions” between those who endured the war at home and those who return after years abroad.

‘I really want to return there’

For others who left earlier, the draw of home remains a daily ache. Another Vania, a 20-year-old from Dnipro who came to Poland with his mother after Russia’s full-scale invasion, has spent nearly four years studying and working in Warsaw. He’s saving money and watching the news — and thinking constantly of the city he left behind.

“I can definitely see my future life in Ukraine. I really want to return there,” he said in a café in central Warsaw. “As soon as the war ends, I’ll go back there instantly. I’m even considering returning there during the war. Because I really miss my city and everything we have there.”

That tension — between the safety and certainty of a life abroad and the pull of rebuilding a battered homeland — runs through countless conversations with young Ukrainians now scattered across Europe. Many intend to stay out the war. Some mean to stay longer. A few are already calculating a path back.

“If the government did not give me the chance to leave, I would probably not have considered it and I would keep living there,” Vadym said. He’s in Warsaw now, with a paycheck and a plan. “I’d like to build my future life here. Maybe I’ll return to Ukraine, but it’s hard to tell for now.”

Between uncertain timelines and deeply personal risk, most decisions are provisional. For a generation whose youth has been defined by air raid alerts and rapid adaptation, the new exit rule has offered a rare choice — and a reminder that what comes next will be decided as much by demographics and politics as by the quiet, daily calculations of 20-year-olds far from home.

By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.