Thanks for the clarification
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/09/ukraine-men-leave/
A Poland-based spokesman for the United Nations’ refugee agency said that among the new arrivals, Ukrainian men of military age were “very uncommon.” But Oleg Palii, the director of a Moldovan legal group that deals with asylum cases, said Moldova has seen plenty of men — including cases involving bribes or people darting across open parts of the border. He said that one night this week, in the Moldovan border town of Palanca, “it was only men passing through.”
Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s state border guard service, said that people between the ages of 18 and 60 who don’t have permission to leave — and who come to official border crossings — are simply turned back. He said those who cross illegally face fines if caught and are “recommended to the local recruiting station.”
In Chisinau, at the army barracks, a 32-year-old IT employee from Kyiv said he and his father, 57, had managed to cross without any problems. They presented non-Ukrainian passports. The catch is that in Ukraine, dual citizenship is illegal. The 32-year-old said he had talked with his dad at length about whether they were doing the right thing, and they agreed that war had forced them into a terrible, cold decision: picking their own interests above those of their country.
“I don’t feel like a traitor,” the son said.
He said it was natural to choose self-preservation.
“Just like America,” the father said.
He asked: Why do you think NATO countries aren’t entering the fight and defending Ukraine?
Svetlana Mihailenko left a son behind who chose to stay and fight for Ukraine in Odessa, but she said she does not judge the men who left the country. (Gianmarco Maraviglia for The Washington Post)
The alternate path — staying behind in Ukraine, fighting — was easier to envision for Svetlana Mihailenko, a 62-year-old grandmother in a lace sweater who arrived at the army barracks with no family at all. She said her “whole life, and her very soul,” had been left behind in Odessa: two grandchildren, her daughter-in-law and her 34-year-old son. They’d chosen to stay together. And her son had joined the local defense unit.
“He was a PR employee before the war,” she said.
To evacuate or not? In Odessa, some older residents cannot flee war.
Mihailenko had a place to go — to a daughter in London — but this way station in Moldova struck her as impossibly sad, a place where any conversation with other refugees would lead to tears. She slept on a bunk bed, waited for a visa to Britain and occasionally received a text message from her son: “Everything is fine, please don’t worry,” he said.
She noticed that all around her were men. Men the age of her son.
“I don’t judge. They will have to live with their choices,” she said. “Even I feel like I ran away.”