Zelensky Offers Multiple Citizenship to Replenish Dead Soldiers — The Story of a Drafted Man

QUESTION: Why would anyone want to literally risk their lives to live in a war torn country?

When all Ukrainians join hands, they won't raise them to surrender. We all fight. And today, this is true not only for the Dnipro's two banks. Today, the unity of Ukrainians spans both hemispheres of the Earth. In every corner of which, on February 24, there were people… pic.twitter.com/ylDwWkOLyj

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 22, 2024

ANSWER: President Volodymyr Zelensky is offering ALL ethnic Ukrainians citizenship, unless they live in Russia. Zelensky is implementing legislation that will allow Ukrainians living abroad to obtain multiple citizenship.

The declaration was made in honor of the 105^th anniversary of Ukrainian Unity Day:

“Everyone who has Ukrainian blood in their veins and a free heart beating in their chest. Ukrainians by origin, who have long proven that they are Ukrainians in spirit. And after many years of waiting, they should finally become Ukrainians by passport. At the legislative level. Today I am submitting to the Verkhovna Rada a key draft law that will allow the adoption of comprehensive legislative amendments and the introduction of multiple citizenship.”

He also added, “And it will allow all ethnic Ukrainians and their descendants from around the world to have our citizenship. Of course, except for citizens of the aggressor country.” Hence there will be no need for an ancestry test to tell if someone is Ukrainian as it would be no different from Russian blood. In Zelensky’s mind, anyone who wants to FIGHT can become Ukrainian.

Foreign volunteers who took up arms to defend Ukraine, all those who fight for Ukraine’s freedom as if it were their homeland. And Ukraine will become such for them. For everyone who can feel that “being in Ukraine” means “being at home.” Not as tourists, but as citizens. Citizens of a great, united, single Ukraine.”

So you can now IDENTIFY as Ukrainian to receive citizenship if you are willing to fight. You can pay taxes as a Ukrainian to support a government that is entirely dependent on US aid to stay afloat.

The fact of the matter is that Zelensky is running out of fighters. Another reader shared a Reddit post with me a few weeks ago entitled, “I don’t want to go to war, and I can’t make myself escape.”

“I'm a 30-year-old guy living in Ukraine. Despite all of the shortcomings of this country, I still feel that this is my home, and for the past years, I've always wanted to live here. Life here had and still has many positives too.

Now the war is raging with absolutely no end in sight. The first year and a half I didn't feel the urge to fight, but I didn't want to run away either, thinking that if it does come to it and I get drafted, I'll just accept it. I didn't want to bribe to become unfit or even look for other ways to avoid the draft. Now, with the state the war is in, especially after my friend who went there willingly last year told me not to go, I decided that I should try to actively avoid it. However, bribes to become unfit are no longer an option and there are little to no ways that would allow me to be exempt legally.

The new draft law is on the way. It would oblige all men eligible for service to update their information in the military offices. In case you don't do that or in case you do, get a draft notice and don't show, you will have your driver's license revoked, bank accounts blocked, get prohibited from buying or selling property, and that's not even the full list.

The option to get a 'one-way ticket' is still on the table. A lot of people who have done this hope to return when the war is over. You leave the country legally but simply don't come back in time. At least at the moment, it's just an administrative offense, not a criminal one.

Even if I do decide to proceed with this option, I'd probably hope to come back as well, and what kind of life is that. I don't have any relatives abroad, just some friends, I'm single, so I will have to start on my own. A few years back I had been traveling abroad alone for 9 months, so I know how it feels being far away from home on your own. I work remotely and make decent enough money, I have savings, so it's definitely possible, but leaving everything behind for an undetermined period of time is still difficult. But planning any kind of future here is virtually impossible as well.

Also, as I said, this is my home, and terrible things will happen to it if everybody just runs away and there's no one left to defend it. But dying in a ditch because some soviet-era commander doesn't value human lives just seems so horrible. I know it's not the only scenario, but it's still a very plausible one.

But many of my friends have already left, many are planning to, so I'm slowly ending up more and more alone here.

It's such a tough decision to make and the more I wait, the harder this all gets.

EDIT

I'll post some additional thoughts here based on some replies since there are way to many comments for me to be able to respond to them. I'll try to be as honest as possible.

- First of all, thank you everyone for your replies and your sympathies. This is an impossible choice to make and I wish I'd never had to. Many of you have said that whatever I do, it will be a right choice. But in the same way any choice I make will also be the wrong one. And any choice I make with a high degree of certainty will be something I at least partially regret until the end of my life.

- There's no such thing as a conscientious objection here.

- Getting a 'support' role is highly unlikely. If we're talking about the military, you are first and foremost a resource and you'll be utilized where you're needed most. Vast majority of loses occur in the active roles, so these are the positions that need to be replenished the most. I even heard a story of a pediatric surgeon who was designated to be not a combat medic, but an infantry man, since those are in the highest demand. Right now we're only starting to see the development of the system to create a possibility to 'choose' your position and place of service (including the ones in the rear). But as of now military service is indefinite and even if that works, it's still a post-soviet army in a big way, and there's no guarantee you won't be transferred to an active role in the future when someone deems it necessary. Also, currently it's obvious that the state does not have much interest in or enough resources for caring about wounded soldiers. In a huge way, once something happens to you, in a big way you're on your own and your only hope is your own resources or volunteers. And that, of course, is not sufficient to help everybody.

- I personally do believe this war is morally justified and existential for us. Yes, this is a failure of politics and politicians: Russia with its imperialism, the West with their inability to act after giving Ukraine guarantees of safety in 1994 and their leniency towards Russia, us with our naivety and short-sightedness. The immaturity of Ukrainian nation has also played its role here. However, for Ukraine this is not a war for resources or Zelensky. It's a war for existence.

- Advocating for peace talks is very unlikely to bear any results in the foreseeable future. There's no way to negotiate with someone who doesn't want to negotiate. Putin believes he can outlast us and the West in the war of attrition, get more territory, and achieve more of his goals, he doesn't care about the lives lost, so there's no reason for him to stop. At the very best there can be a pause that he will use to rearm and attack again with a new force. The only way this can be stopped is with force and deterrence.

- That being said, I'm not trying to paint my desire to leave as anything but concern for my personal safety. A lot of people who have commented believe that's justifiable. And I partly agree. A lot of people on the other hand believe that this is cowardice. And I partly agree with that as well. It's either you believe that you have a right to live your life and that it is precious, or that you have a duty that you never willingly took to give that life for a country where you happened to be born a male.

- There's no need to judge the whole of the Ukrainian nation by my character. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have willingly taken arms and sacrificed their own health and lives. There are many more who are ready to do that when the time comes.”

It is hard to envy this man’s position. He must choose between a violent bloody war or abandoning his home. Sadly, he and most others were led to believe that peace was not an option. Putin has offered Zelensky countless opportunities to end the war but he consistently chooses to amplify tensions by involving his NATO neocons. He mentions that conscientious objection is not an option for Ukrainians.

The original poster sheds light on the dire situation at the frontlines. “I even heard a story of a pediatric surgeon who was designated to be not a combat medic, but an infantry man, since those are in the highest demand,” he wrote. There are simply not enough men to meet the replenishment rate due to the high number of casualties.

There are comments calling this man a coward, stating that it is his patriotic duty to stay and fight what he perceives to be “an endless war.” These are the people who will choose to leave their homelands and accept multiple citizenship in Ukraine. They believe they are fighting a war between good and evil, as Zelensky frequently deems it.

People living in horrid conditions in other countries can simply come to the US now, where the borders are open, and they’ll receive a tax-payer subsidized life. If the neocons want to prey on the desperate, close the borders to the US, Canada, and Europe. I do not know who would make a decision to enter a war on behalf of a foreign nation for any reason outside of desperation or insanity.