Yuri Kobzar22:17, 13.09.25

Previously, Ukrainian border guards denied the mass exodus of young people after the change in rules.

Poland is recording a mass arrival of Ukrainian men aged 18-22 , who have been allowed to leave Ukraine since the end of August. This is reported by Rzeczpospolita , citing statistics from Polish border guards.

It is reported that in the first week of the new rules alone, 10,600 Ukrainians of the specified age group entered Poland. At the same time, statistics show that the number of not only those young men who leave Ukraine, but also those who return has increased significantly.

Thus, a week before the introduction of the new rules (August 21-27), approximately 500 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 22 left Ukraine through border crossings belonging to the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. And 650 entered Ukraine during the same period.

And already the following week, when the new rules came into effect, 6,100 Ukrainian men from the specified group entered Poland through the same checkpoints, and 2,000 went in the opposite direction – to Ukraine.

Approximately the same picture was observed at checkpoints in the Lublin Voivodeship, although the overall flow there was slightly smaller.

The publication does not report whether this trend continued in the following weeks. But it does quote Krzysztof Nieczypor, an expert at the Center for Eastern Studies, who, citing sociological survey data, claims that most young men who arrived in Poland will most likely travel further to Western Europe and wait for the war to end there.

New rules for men traveling abroad

As UNIAN reported, on August 28 , new rules for crossing the border came into force in Ukraine , according to which men aged 18-22 are now allowed to freely leave the country on an equal basis with women, children and pensioners.

Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained this decision by the fact that under the old rules, parents would take young men abroad en masse before they reached 18 years of age , and they would enroll in universities abroad, which almost eliminates the likelihood of them returning to Ukraine. Now, however, there is no need to leave Ukraine immediately after finishing school, so young men can receive higher education at home, which significantly increases the likelihood that they will stay in Ukraine later.

At the beginning of September, the State Border Service of Ukraine claimed that they were not recording a significant increase in the number of men aged 18-22 leaving Ukraine.

(c)UNIAN 2025