Lithuania agrees with the the idea of returning conscripted Ukrainians

The President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda agrees with the need to return to Ukraine men of military age living abroad. According to him, the Ukrainian authorities need to develop a mobilization plan.

He stated this on April 29 on LRT radio.

"Ukraine must have means and tools to invite its young men to serve their homeland. We should cooperate with Ukraine in every sense," Nauseda said.

Prime Minister Ingrid Šimonite also supports the idea of returning Ukrainian men and suggests that Vilnius will take "some steps" to help Kyiv in this.

"We could probably look for some ways to make sure that a person has fulfilled their mobilization duty or is exempt from it when we consider the issue of extending a residence permit," the Prime Minister said.

Prehistory

Since April 23, consular services have been suspended for Ukrainians of conscription age who are abroad. The restrictions will apply until the law on mobilization comes into force (May 18), after which consular services can be obtained by updating the data in the territorial recruit centers (TRCs). On the same day, SE "Dokument" announced the suspension of issuing ready-made documents abroad due to "technical reasons". Issuance was left only for children under 12 years of age, as they do not need biometric verification.

After that, more than 300 Ukrainians blocked the passport service in Warsaw with the demand to issue them documents. People have received messages that their documents are ready, but they are being refused.

One of the drafters of the law on mobilization, MP Fedir Venislavskyi explained to Babel that the rule on updating data when providing consular services aims to assess the real mobilization resource within the country. That is, the TRC will know that these people are abroad, and they will not be looking for them in Ukraine and will not spend appropriate resources on this. No one will be deported from abroad, because such mechanisms simply do not exist.

• Germany has declared that it does not plan to deprive Ukrainian men of mobilization age of refugee status. According to Eurostat, the largest number of Ukrainians live in this country — 1 286 580. And these are only officially registered people who received the status of temporary protection.
• On April 24, the Minister of Defense of Poland spoke about the readiness to facilitate the return of men of draft age to Ukraine, but did not name any mechanism that would allow this to be implemented.