In September 2025, shortly after permission for men aged 18 to 22 to leave Ukraine came into force, two videos went viral on Telegram channels and social networks, allegedly proving that, having received such an opportunity, young men began to leave abroad en masse. We have verified the reliability of this video evidence.
The videos spread across the Internet on September 6 and 7, usually they were published together. The author of the first captured a group of young men with backpacks boarding a train on a railway platform, the author of the second captured a queue of minibuses. With captions stating that the video shows young people leaving Ukraine en masse, they were posted by Telegram channels “Ne.Sugar"(209,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Ukraine.ru"(187,000), "Vobla • news"(112,000), "Z-News | Army 🅉 18+"(56,000), "TalipoV Online Z"(56,000). Some channels, for example "Sheikh Tamir" (124,000 views) and "Russian bun and green stick"(123,000), published only videos with a queue.
After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, martial law was introduced in the country; ban for departure of men aged 18 to 60 years. Exceptions existed for volunteers, students, disabled people, fathers of many children, traveling for treatment and some other categories of citizens. Against this background, a black market for services for exporting men abroad has formed in Ukraine: from fakes medical certificates to providing guides who smuggled people through forests illegally. Criminal cases were brought against the organizers of such schemes in the western regions of the country, the defendants of which steel including border guards and police. A package of services for transporting one person abroad, according to investigators, could cost up to $15,000.
On August 26, 2025, the Ukrainian government updated the rules for crossing the border, allowing men aged 18 to 22 years old are allowed to leave the country despite martial law regulations. The innovation came into force on August 28. Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko explained This decision is because the authorities are interested in maintaining connections between young people and Ukraine.
More than two weeks have passed since then. Polish Border Guard at the turn of August-September recorded an influx of young Ukrainians into the country: from August 28 to September 3, 6,100 men aged 18–22 arrived in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship from Ukraine, while only 500 people of the same age entered the Podkarpackie Voivodeship the week before. A similar situation is observed in the Lublin Voivodeship: 4,605 young Ukrainians entered there, and a week earlier - only 461. At the same time, the number of border crossings in the opposite direction also increased noticeably - from approximately 1,200 to 3,300 young men over the same two weeks, according to statistics from the same Polish regions. However, the data from the Ukrainian border service differs: there stated, that they did not record a significant increase in passenger traffic at the checkpoint, although there are no accurate statistics on the ages of those leaving. Be that as it may, experts note that changes may be related with the start of the school year, and not with relaxations in the rules.
As evidence of the alleged mass exodus of young Ukrainians from the country, Telegram channels publish two videos. In the first, young men with backpacks enter the train and are escorted by women (apparently their mothers). However, firstly, it is difficult to call the departure of men massive, based solely on this video - about 20 young people board the train, and secondly, they look much younger than 18 years old.
A reverse search of the screenshot showed that this video was first published on the @bc_skhid_lozova Instagram page back on July 25, a month before permission to cross the border for Ukrainians aged 18 to 22 years. This account belongs to the basketball team “Skhid” (“East” - Ukrainian) from the city of Lozovaya in the Kharkov region. There are no captions under the video, however, judging by publications on the team’s Facebook page, soon after this the juniors went to competitions in the Vinnytsia region. It is reported that young men born in 2011 participated in a friendly tournament there from August 1 to 4.
As for the second video, it shows a convoy of cars, filmed, according to the caption on the video, on September 5th.
Although “Verified” was unable to find the original source of this video, there are a huge number of similar videos on the Internet, the authors of which record queues at the border. For example, a TikTok user with the username @transfer_to_paris posts similar videos on average once a week, which allows you to assess whether the number of people leaving has increased. Before the change in the rules for exiting Ukraine, the queues at this checkpoint, judging by the video, were also long.
First, a video with queues of cars spread across the Internet, which published Telegram channel “Russian Kolobok and the green junkie” September 6 at 23:42 Moscow time. The next day, a July video with a basketball team appeared, which was passed off as footage of a mass exodus of young people from the country. First time with this misleading caption appeared September 7 at 17:33 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Actually in Kyiv”. The account owner captioned the video: “And the worst thing is that they are seen off not with tears of despair, but with relief. Mothers sigh calmly: they won’t take their son into the trenches, won’t return him in a black bag, won’t ruin his life for the sake of other people’s interests.” Both channel were encountered in “Verified” analyzes as primary sources and distributors of fakes. Next video spread together - allegedly as evidence that young men are being transported en masse from Ukraine by buses and trains.
Thus, these videos cannot serve as evidence that after changing the rules for traveling abroad, young men began to leave Ukraine en masse. One of the videos shows a youth basketball team's trip back in July. The other, most likely, actually captured a queue of cars at the border, but in its length it is not very different from the columns of cars that were captured in similar videos in other weeks. At the turn of August and September, the Polish border service recorded an increase in the number of young Ukrainians not only entering the country, but also leaving it for their homeland.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons
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