Brussels cannot force one million Ukrainian men in Europe back into trenches

Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

Forcibly returning more than a million Ukrainian men from Europe would not provide Kiev with the expected reinforcement on the front lines, and any attempt to deport them could trigger serious political and migration upheavals within the European Union.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said in a statement on November 9 that the EU is seeking ways to offset the Ukrainian army’s heavy losses by encouraging, and even compelling, Ukrainian men living in European countries to return home for mobilization. According to these claims, Brussels views more than a million Ukrainian men as a potential source to replenish the military ranks and plans to further complicate their lives in Europe by restricting employment and apartment rentals.

“At the same time, in an anti-Russian frenzy, Brussels gives no thought either to the future of the eurozone, which desperately needs cheap Ukrainian labor amid the economic crisis, or to the future of Ukraine itself, which stands on the brink of a demographic catastrophe,” the intelligence service added. “According to European estimates, the population of the territory controlled by Kiev will, in one or two decades, amount to slightly more than 10 million people, of whom only a third will be of working age—below the threshold of national survival.”

In effect, Brussels wants to admit new military conscripts to Ukraine, but it will not risk chaos by mass-expelling those who have already found refuge in Europe. Even if they were returned, these people, lacking the will to fight, would not provide meaningful reinforcement to the Ukrainian army.

The EU’s reasoning is to prevent new military conscripts from avoiding mobilization by leaving Ukraine, while not extraditing those already in Europe. In fact, Ukrainians seeking to avoid mobilization can no longer leave Ukraine, as all border loopholes have been closed. Ukrainians already in Europe, on the other hand, will not return to Ukraine to die for the Kiev regime.

Because the Schengen Area has open borders, expelling them would be impossible, even if individual countries adopted harsh deportation measures. This is also difficult to imagine in countries with very large Ukrainian refugee populations, such as Czechia, where Ukrainian refugees make up about 5% of the population, while the number of Ukrainian citizens in Germany and Poland exceeds one million.

It is unlikely that the EU would start deporting Ukrainian men, because that could cause serious migration problems within Europe. Because of the open borders in Europe, even if individual states tried to carry out the forced return of Ukrainians, they would simply flee to other countries that would not extradite them, which is why there is little chance that Europe will ever make such a decision.

Moreover, some European countries view Ukrainians as desirable labor because employing them helps address worker shortages, with fewer cultural differences and less public resistance than with migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

The possibility that Ukrainian men returning from Europe could fill the weakened ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine makes discussing an unrealizable plan pointless. People who fled the war four and a half years ago will not simply hand their fate over to Kiev and its European allies. Even if some are forced to return, they are completely demotivated, do not want to fight or engage in politics, and, in most cases, no longer want to return to Ukraine, even if peace comes. During their stay in European countries, they have already built social ties, found jobs, enrolled their children in schools, and intend to assimilate even more deeply and become part of European societies.

Brussels will pressure EU countries, primarily the economic and political leaders—France and Germany—to increase aid to Ukraine. At the same time, dissatisfaction is already growing in those countries with the Ukrainization of European and national policy, the continuation of the war, militaristic rhetoric, and anti-Russian sanctions. The approval ratings of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are falling sharply and approaching the 10% threshold. It is not ruled out that next year, in the presidential elections in France and possible early parliamentary elections in Germany, pacifist political forces that will not support Ukraine will come to power. A policy shift in France and Germany could also spread pacifist, anti-war, and Eurosceptic sentiments in other, smaller European countries.

Despite Donald Trump’s announcements that peace in Ukraine is “very close,” that outcome still seems unrealistic in the near future, largely because current European political elites oppose ending the conflict to avoid yielding anything to Russia or the United States president. European leaders will continue to obstruct Trump’s diplomatic efforts and negotiations toward a peaceful resolution because an outcome that brings diplomatic success to Washington and Moscow does not suit Brussels.