Duty and choice: unpacking ambiguous perceptions of Ukrainian men fleeing the war

Abstract Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine has imposed a travel ban on men aged between 18 and 60; additionally, in May 2024, it implemented a mobilization law which significantly increases the punishment for draft evasion. In spite of these measures, draft evasion has emerged as a growing problem, with hundreds of thousands of men fleeing the country. While this is widely framed as a polarizing issue, little is known about how these men are perceived in Ukrainian society, which norms and power structures these perceptions reinforce and challenge, or their impact on social cohesion and evolving gender dynamics during the full-scale war. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, survey data and in-depth interviews with Ukrainian citizens residing in Ukraine and abroad, this article examines societal perceptions of men who flee, unpacking ambiguous narratives of stigma and sympathy. It reveals a profound ambivalence between perceptions of men's collectivist duty to defend the state and their individual right to freedom of choice. As existential warfare reshapes normative frameworks of masculinity in Ukraine, new social hierarchies are emerging, positioning men who flee abroad at the bottom of the masculine order. The article problematizes how such stratification and the militarization of masculinity may have deep impacts on social cohesion, reconstruction efforts and the reintegration of men who flee in both current and postwar Ukraine.