These young men fled Ukraine, but found a Europe far less welcoming

Just after May Day last year Daniyl Omelchuk left his home in Kyiv, perhaps forever.

Equipped with a phone, downloaded maps, a compass, hiking sticks and a sleeping bag, he and a mate headed towards Ukraine's west.

From a rural train platform they took a taxi closer to the Romanian border. Its driver warned them "not to be fools and tell anyone about your plans".

As the weather warmed the then-26-year-old and his friend took what he calls the "exit to freedom". 

They went mostly off-track — wading through a river, descending pine-filled valleys and clambering up mist-shrouded Carpathian mountain peaks.

Exhausted and hungry, they eventually made it into the European Union after six days traversing a remote national park.

His photos make the journey look idyllic. But Daniyl says it was far from a jaunt.

In 2022 the Ukrainian government banned men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country, so his journey was illegal, as well as dangerous.

"We thought it would only take three days," the filmmaker and former recycling company employee recalls.

"For the last two days we were totally without food. And there was no way back. Either we'd be caught by border guards or we'd get away."

Caught at least once on thermal-imaging cameras, the friends were pursued at times by government agents with barking dogs. 

They feared if they were caught they would be beaten and then forced to join the Ukrainian army.

"On the mountain roads there are camera traps," he wrote in his journal.

"They use motorcycles to arrive quickly, shoot in the air … and tell you to leave your hiding place. Don't react! Just sit still."

On day six, when the young men arrived at an unattended spot on the border, Daniyl kissed a stone post with the Romanian flag painted on it.

Then he kept walking. Later, while being processed along with nearly 40 other men by Romanian border guards, he wrote about his experiences.

"How do you tell a guy is from Ukraine? When he walks, he limps — and most of them do," he wrote.

"Because they've spent anywhere from a day to a week crossing the mountains. Pushing themselves to their last ounce of strength."

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022 and sparked the ongoing war, thousands of men have fled Ukraine illegally, escaping over the border or bribing their way out.

Discussing the topic openly damages the country's morale, and the Ukrainian government does not release official figures on how many have gone.

But data from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency's database shows at least 32,577 Ukrainians have crossed the EU's eastern border illegally since February 2022. 

The "vast majority" of these people are men of military age, the agency said.

Now, for almost four months and for the first time since Russia's invasion, many young men have been legally allowed to leave Ukraine.

In late August the Ukrainian government lifted the ban on those aged 18 to 22 leaving the country, prompting concerns another wave of potential soldiers would leave to avoid conscription which begins at age 25.

Governments from Warsaw to Dublin have reported an upswing in young male arrival numbers since September.

But unlike the early days of the full-scale war when Ukrainian refugees were welcomed with open arms, the latest arrivals have stoked immigration debate.

Buses from Ukraine arriving in Berlin at all hours

At Berlin's central station buses with many young men aboard pull in directly from frontline and near-frontline Ukrainian cities such as Kharkiv, Kherson and Izyum, at all hours.

Nearly everyone who gets off looks exhausted. 

The journey is both long and arduous, taking up to two days, and some routes are targeted by attack drones.

On a chilly November night 20-year-old Rostyslav, or "Rosty", struggles with his hefty duffel bag.

Rosty is from Pokrovsk in Ukraine's east, a city which has become famous in recent weeks as Ukrainian and Russian soldiers fight for every street and every building.

The young man was planning to flee the country via the mountains before the government changed its rules for young men.

"My house, it's completely destroyed. Only the walls remain," Rosty says. 

"Luckily I left before it became impossible to get out. Now no-one can enter or leave the city. Officially there are no buses, nothing."

In Germany, which already houses more Ukrainian refugees than any other country in Europe, the government says male arrivals are now outnumbering female arrivals for the first time.

German interior ministry figures show a peak of 1,800 young men arriving per week in September, up from around 100 per week in August, although that number has "since levelled off", a spokesperson said.

Nearly four years since the massive Russian invasion began many newcomers are, like Rosty, deeply traumatised.

"I have already lost a lot of people close to me," he said.

"I was examined by psychiatrists. I won't name the exact diagnoses but I have at least two. I take a combination of three antidepressants.

"If I have to work hard jobs for a minimum wage and rebuild my life anyway, where will it be easier to do that? In Ukraine or here, in Germany? I made my choice."

Anti-Ukrainian sentiment growing across Europe

In the aftermath of Russia's invasion in 2022 governments and people around the world expressed sympathy for the plight of Ukrainian refugees.

The EU granted them automatic residence and the right to welfare, work and healthcare throughout the bloc. It left the levels of benefits up to individual member states.

At that time Berlin's Brandenburg Gate was lit up in yellow and blue, the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Many residents even housed new arrivals.

Like the migration crisis just over half a decade earlier the German government was among the most generous of European states. 

It granted Ukrainians the same unemployment benefits as locals in addition to paying for housing, heating and language courses.

The idea was to integrate newcomers quickly, rather than preventing them from working while their asylum claims were judged as German migration law stipulates.

However the country's famed willkommenskultur, its culture of welcoming newcomers, now seems to be flagging.

"We still have [local] volunteers who come every week and support us. But … fewer come now," says Darina Zaretskaya, the head of LaruHelpsUkraine, an NGO assisting Ukrainian refugees.

The German government has announced it will reduce benefits for Ukrainian refugees to the levels received by other asylum seekers, while leaving the right to work unaltered. 

Ms Zaretskaya is worried the changes could cause further unemployment because Ukrainians may also find it more difficult to access language courses.

"People who want to integrate and find a job … are willing to pay the state back later," she told the ABC. 

"I think this [bill] will set back integration."

The benefit cuts had long been proposed by Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the far-right opposition party in Germany. Once a political outlier the AfD is now neck-and-neck with Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU/CSU conservative coalition in the polls. 

According to the AfD its tough stance on refugees has boosted its electoral standing.

"We are the strongest party because people have had it with our country being ruined economically and our welfare state paying for the whole world," says AfD labour and social policy spokesman René Springer. 

"We have to put an end to it."

On the question of the latest wave of arrivals, Chancellor Merz has made even stronger comments.

"We [Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and I] had a long conversation and I asked him to make sure that young Ukrainian men don't come to Germany in ever larger numbers," Mr Merz told business leaders. 

Mr Zelenskyy has not responded to the Chancellor publicly and his office did not answer a request for comment.

By cutting benefits to Ukrainian refugees, Berlin is following many other European governments.

Poland now restricts free access to state-run refugee shelters to those classed as "vulnerable" — such as the elderly, disabled people and pregnant women — leaving most Ukrainians to find private accommodation from day one. 

Hungary applies similar criteria, and has also declared western Ukraine "safe" — effectively barring people from that area from entering state accommodation at all.

Experts say Ukraine mass migration is over

While some European political leaders warn that growing numbers of young arrivals could strain social systems, and others argue their departure weakens Kyiv's war effort, Ukrainian demographers say it is too soon to know how many will leave for good.

Some also say that even if there is an exodus of younger men it may not have a huge impact inside Ukraine.

Demographer Olga Dukhnich of Kyiv's Frontier Institute points out that there are very few 18 to 22-year-old Ukrainians overall, it is one of the country's smallest age groups. 

She believes that even a mass departure of men of this age group is unlikely to make a huge difference at the frontline, or to society, because there are simply not enough of them in the first place.

And, she adds, European countries are not reporting arrivals on the scale of those in 2022. 

The young men now leaving are likely those who have long been stopped by border controls from seeking fortune elsewhere.

"The mass migration we saw is over," Dr Dukhnich says. 

"People who have decided to stay here are adapted to the circumstances. So if the frontline stays stable, if there's no breakthrough or catastrophe, I don't think that will change."

Yet with Russia's numerical advantage putting Ukraine under pressure in the country's south and east, many soldiers are concerned about the change's effects on Kyiv's defensive capacity.

Popular TikToker Valentyn Voytun left Ukraine days after the ban on young men leaving was lifted and made a video about crossing the border. It has now been viewed 10.7 million times.

"I'm in Poland!" the 21-year-old shrieks with joy. "I don't believe it. I just don't believe it."

Since late August, Mr Voytun has been pictured posing at the Eiffel Tower, cavorting in a nightspot, and twirling on the beach. He declined the ABC's request for an interview.

His TikToks have met a mixed reaction online, from outright support to jokey memes poking fun. 

Soldiers on the frontline cringe at the videos, while acknowledging that Mr Voytun has not broken current regulations by going abroad.

"It doesn't earn him any respect on my end," says Oleksandr, a drone operator who works the Kharkiv region's Kupiansk front, one of the war's hottest areas. He did not give his last name because he had not been authorised to speak publicly.

The volunteer soldier is critical of the government decision to let young men leave which he says has exacerbated existing manpower problems.

"It's definitely one of our biggest issues," he said. 

"If we're talking purely from a survival standpoint, in terms of Ukraine, it was not the right decision. 

"The lack of personnel is a pretty big obstacle that we have no means of overcoming, probably without the help of other countries."

The 28-year-old former translator reserves his scorn for those who have fled the country via the green border.

Daniyl Omelchuk has little intention of returning to Ukraine, where he became disillusioned and depressed at all the death and corruption.

After fleeing last year he spent about a year wandering the continent before finally settling in Berlin, where he has now been living for three months.

Reflecting on his journey, he vividly remembers the moment after crossing the border when he began to process everything he had been through.

"I was sitting under a bridge in Budapest. There were young people all around me. They were smiling, laughing, happy. Everything was alive, there were no rockets," Daniyl says.

"I just wanted to have a normal life, having friends, being happy, learning. 

"There was a lot of pain inside me. And I started to cry. They were tears of joy."