Germany slams door on Ukrainian men fleeing war

 Friedrich Merz has told Volodymyr Zelensky to stop allowing young Ukrainian men to flee to Germany.

In a phone call with the Ukrainian leader, the German chancellor said the young men were needed to fight in their home country.

“I asked the Ukrainian president to ensure that young men, from Ukraine in particular, do not come to Germany in ever-increasing numbers, but rather serve in their own country. They are needed there,” said Mr Merz, who took office in May.

Kyiv has eased wartime rules that prevented men of fighting age from leaving the country via its land borders, the only route of exit.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine introduced martial law and blocked men aged 18 to 60 from leaving, even if they were ineligible for military service.

But a new rule introduced by Mr Zelensky in August now allows Ukrainian men under 23 to travel abroad. The same reforms also lowered the age at which men were required to fight from 27 to 25, owing to manpower shortages on the front lines.

The relaxed rules resulted in almost 100,000 young Ukrainian men – a figure higher than the entire 70,000-strong British Army – leaving the country, with many heading to Germany via Poland.

Mr Zelensky wanted to end the practice of Ukrainian parents sending their children abroad before they turned 18 to prevent them from being drafted.

But another consequence has been a surge in young, male Ukrainian refugees travelling to Germany, creating a rare point of friction between Mr Merz and Mr Zelensky.

Mr Merz is under intense pressure to reassure Germans that he can keep migration under control, having campaigned on a platform of tough border controls as chancellor.

On Thursday, Germany’s coalition secured a breakthrough in passing their new national service plan into law, which was shelved last month because of political in-fighting.

Mr Merz’s centre-Right Christian Democrats (CDU) party and his centre-Left coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD), have agreed to call up 18-year-old males for compulsory medical exams, in the hope it will encourage them to volunteer for the armed forces.

They have also agreed to include a clause that allows small-scale conscription if the army cannot find enough volunteers, but provided no detail on Thursday as to what that would entail.

Germany welcomed more than 1.2m refugees from Ukraine when Vladimir Putin launched his illegal invasion on Feb 24 2022.

The rise in refugees has fuelled the rise of the anti-migrant, Kremlin-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which secured an unprecedented second place in last February’s federal elections.

In a bid to tackle migration, Mr Merz’s coalition is also working on a so-called repatriation offensive which is aimed at persuading, and if necessary forcing, Syrian refugees to return home, now that the civil war in their country has ended.

“The Syrian civil war is over, there is absolutely no reason to claim asylum in Germany any more and we can therefore begin with repatriations,” he said.

He went on to claim that a “very large proportion” of Germany’s million-strong Syrian refugee community wished to return home. “We can of course in the future deport those in Germany who refuse to return,” he added.