From buying a deferment to the blackout bill: how Ukrainians online have argued over the cost of staying

"Pay and you won't have to fight": a proposal that set an IT forum alight

The idea came from Andrii Onistrat, whom the Ukrainian outlet LIGA.net describes as a serviceman and former banker. In an interview he argued that Ukraine should create an open "economic reservation" scheme for employees liable for military service, priced at $1,500 per person per month. The DOU user who brought his words to the forum did the maths: $1,500 is about 65,000 hryvnias (UAH); if one in twenty of the wanted draft evaders and of those holding deferments on paper as students or carers agreed to pay, the state would raise an extra $1.8bn a year, enough to give frontline soldiers a pay rise.

He did not pretend to be a bystander. On the thread's second day, when someone questioned his motives, he replied:

The first wave of replies was almost all abuse, but not in the direction one might expect. Few said that paying to avoid service was immoral; far more called it legalised extortion, or simply did not believe the state would keep its word once it had the money. One suggested saving six months' worth of payments to bribe the border guards instead of paying the government every month; a user writing in Russian said that if someone was willing to pay $1,500 a month for a promise not to be "grabbed by people with no insignia in a minibus", he should just pay him: he could promise anything.

AnalysisThe thread stayed hot for only three days. By our count, 255 comments were posted on 5 October alone, after which the discussion drifted fast: some began arguing over whether to agree a ceasefire and give up the Donbas, while a large group quoted the law clause by clause, arguing over whether recruitment officers may lawfully check papers on the street and take people away. We drew a random sample of 100 from the 328 comments of the first two days and classified them by hand. Only 34 dealt with paying for a deferment as such: 14 against, 9 sceptical it would work and 11 in favour; the rest were off topic or jokes. DOU is a community of Ukrainian IT workers, so these proportions describe this thread only and cannot be extrapolated to the country.

Conscription in the war's fifth year: deferments on paper, "busification" on the street

To understand the argument, you need to know the two sets of rules Ukrainian men live under. On paper, critical enterprises can apply for a deferment (known in Ukraine as "reservation") for their employees, provided, among other conditions, that they are well paid. According to a summary by the Ukrainian outlet ThePublic, the 2026 threshold is 2.5 times the minimum wage, or UAH 21,617 a month before tax; the defence industry may reserve up to 100% of its staff. As for an "economic reservation" that would let people pay directly for a deferment, Onistrat's argument is that Ukraine should create such a system; in other words, it does not exist at present.

On the street it is another matter. The Territorial Centres of Recruitment and Social Support (TCC, ТЦК), which handle conscription, have become notorious over the past two years, and internet users coined a word, "busification" (бусифікація), for recruitment officers pushing men into minibuses on the street and driving them away. In May the parliamentary human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, told parliament that in 2025 he received more than 6,000 complaints of mobilisation abuses, his most pressing problem of the year and 333 times as many as in 2022. He said masks, unlawful use of force and beatings were continuing, and that civilians had even died inside recruitment centres.

The subject is also a favourite of Russian information warfare. Texty, a Ukrainian data-journalism outlet, monitors TikTok and YouTube comments every week. In the last week of September, it found 16 "talking head" accounts it classifies as spreading subversive content posting 35 conscription-related videos, with more than 1.8m views in total; other videos spread a rumour that young men would no longer be allowed abroad without military training. Texty also notes that Ukrainian officials themselves admit the mobilisation system needs reform.

This puts Ukrainian-language Reddit in a bind. In an r/reddit_ukr thread arguing over the subreddit's rules, one user asked: if the videos are real, should everyone stay silent just because Russia might use them?

In another thread, a young man who had been taken in by a recruitment centre asked for help online: could poor eyesight get him exempted? Some replies explained how to request a new medical examination; others simply told him not to worry about being tracked down:

Leaving: after 18- to 22-year-olds were allowed abroad

After Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine imposed martial law, and men aged 18 to 60 were in principle barred from leaving the country. In late August 2025 the government relaxed the rule to let men under 23 travel abroad. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the aim was for young people to "keep their ties with Ukraine"; the Ukrainian outlet LB.ua described public reaction as mixed: some welcomed the chance for young people abroad to come home to visit, others thought it would make future mobilisation harder.

The effect came faster than expected. Citing Britain's Daily Telegraph and Polish border data, LIGA.net reported that within two months of the change about 99,000 men aged 18 to 22 left via Poland, peaking at 1,600 a day. Figures from Germany's interior ministry showed the number of Ukrainian men of that age registering in Germany rising from about 100 a week to nearly 1,000; in November the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, phoned Volodymyr Zelensky to say young men should serve in their own country.

On the forums this became a very personal question. In February someone on r/reddit_ukr asked whether it was still worth moving to Germany in 2026, and the replies split into two camps:

By autumn someone asked the reverse question: men of 21 or 22 who have decided to stay in Ukraine, why are you staying? The thread quickly turned heated, because some felt the question itself assumed that fleeing was the norm. One user said he had never thought of going abroad and had signed the army's short-term contract for young people, ready to go to the front; another replied that not everyone wants to die for their country.

For those already abroad, the worry turns to tax. In September a couple living in the Czech Republic under the EU's "temporary protection" asked on DOU: both still work remotely as Ukrainian sole proprietors (FOP, ФОП), with their income paid into Ukrainian accounts, so are they tax residents in the Czech Republic? Most replies urged them to get compliant quickly; a user writing in Russian remarked coldly that people are not going back only because of the war, and that once it ends almost all of them will be asked to go home.

Who fills the gap: a migrant wave that never happened

With people gone abroad or to the front, who will do the work? This spring the question turned into an online panic. Research by the Ukrainian media watchdog Detector Media found that a petition submitted to the cabinet on 11 May, demanding that the government "protect the domestic labour market" from migrant workers, quickly gathered 25,000 signatures. Paradoxically, the number of foreign workers has fallen since the full-scale invasion: 21,800 received work permits in 2021, against just 7,500 in 2025. Detector Media counted more than 60% negative media coverage at the height of the debate, from 5 to 10 May.

The forums show the panic even more clearly. In an r/RedditUATalks thread asking whether there really are Indian migrant workers, one user summed up the future he imagined in a sentence, while others thought it a needless fear:

In another thread about integration, one user brought the question back to reality: with most of the workforce abroad or at the front, what else is there besides migration? Many opponents used xenophobic language about being "replaced"; in an r/reddit_ukr thread on migration policy, about 30% of the comments had been deleted by moderators and we could not see them.

"Is it women's turn now?": a petition with fewer than 600 signatures

In August a petition appeared on the cabinet's website calling for military service to be extended to women without children. Texty's monitoring found that within a week it had fewer than 600 signatures, far short of the 25,000 threshold, yet its mere existence was enough to set off a storm on social media, and Russian propaganda seized the chance to amplify claims that "the elite don't fight" and that "the government is slaughtering its own people". Texty also clarified that the defence ministry had indeed bought 2,000 body-armour vests for women, but with more than 75,000 women already serving, the purchase covered only 3% of need.

Two Reddit threads were far more reasoned than TikTok, but just as divided. Some argued that the constitution makes no distinction between the sexes and that women should at least fill support posts; some opposed forcing anyone to the front; others said equality on paper is not equality in practice and that conditions should be improved first. A user who said he was a soldier wrote that his wife had been raising their two children alone for five years, and that his army pay was lower than her salary as a kindergarten teacher.

Winter, bills and fares: the household accounts

The war is written straight into the household accounts. Late on 8 January, Russian strikes on Kyiv's energy facilities left about 500,000 people without power and nearly 6,000 apartment blocks, about half of the city's housing, without heating. The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, urged those with somewhere else to go to leave; he later said that, according to mobile-phone data, about 600,000 people had temporarily left Kyiv since January. President Zelensky criticised the city for slow repairs, and the two sides traded blame.

On r/RedditUATalks, under a post quoting the mayor as saying "almost all buildings" had their heating back, users were not convinced; some compared Kyiv with Kharkiv, which has a smaller budget, while others pointed out that air-defence ammunition is not the mayor's responsibility.

This winter does not look any easier. On 14 October Russia launched one of its largest attacks on facilities of Ukrenergo, the national grid operator, and rolling blackouts returned in some regions; the prime minister warned that living conditions might get harder.

At the same time, prices are rising faster. Data from Ukraine's state statistics service show consumer prices up 2.1% month on month in September and annual inflation up to 10.0%; eggs rose 43.6% in a single month. In Kyiv, public transport fares went up from UAH 8 to UAH 30 on 15 July. The city said it needed to cut "huge subsidies"; critics said it would hit low-income residents hard. The monthly pass, originally proposed at UAH 4,875, was eventually set at UAH 3,656. After the rise was announced in May, a petition against it gathered more than 6,000 signatures in under 24 hours; LIGA.net also noted that Klitschko had promised not to change fares until the war was over.

On r/reddit_ukr, one user did the sums for everyone: rather than burn money on fares every day, better to buy an electric scooter in instalments; others defended the subsidy.

No home, no faith in the pension: how IT workers hedge

If Reddit argues over ordinary people's household accounts, IT workers on DOU are doing a different kind of sum. In April someone opened a thread with a provocative title: "Why are most Ukrainian IT people 'homeless'?" The author was puzzled: IT incomes are among the highest in Ukraine, yet four of his five colleagues rent, while relatives and friends who earn far less have mostly bought homes.

The 621 comments offered all kinds of answers: some said the maths favours renting, others that median pay is not that high after all. But the most common reason was simple: in a country bombed every day, putting your money into property is madness. Several said they had bought homes and then lost them: a flat in Kherson never lived in for a single day, a house outside Kyiv lived in for ten months in five years. One user added up what he had given to the army and spent building drones and found it would long since have bought a flat.

Another thread on retirement, from February, ruled out the state pension from the start: "The state pension we won't discuss seriously; that's clear." In the 296 comments that followed, investors posting their ETF allocations faced people who felt that talking about retirement was a luxury.

AnalysisTaken together, these threads share a common thread: people do not much trust state institutions to keep their promises, whether the recruitment centres, the tax office, the pension system or the city's pledge on fares, so they try to keep their fate in their own hands: cash, foreign currency, jobs they can take with them and a status that lets them leave at any time. The "economic reservation" idea was denounced as extortion by the same logic: the problem was not the price but the belief that paying would not buy any real protection. This is an observation drawn from our forum sample, not a finding from a poll.

How the mainstream media see it, and what the forums add

Ukraine's mainstream media mostly approach these subjects through figures and institutions: LIGA.net and The Kyiv Independent report on departure numbers and Germany's reaction, Kyiv Post and ThePublic on fares and petitions, while Detector Media framed the migrant issue as "a migrant wave that never happened" and traced where the negative narratives came from. Monitors such as Texty frame it as information warfare, treating the volume of debate on conscription or mobilising women as a battlefield where Russian propaganda exploits social divisions.

AnalysisWhat the forums add is the first-person voice that is rarer in that reporting: an IT engineer admitting he does not want to fight, a soldier whose wife earns more than he does, a Kyiv resident feeling an icy radiator on a night of minus 17. They are also a reminder that not all discontent with the government comes from Russia: on Reddit people openly debate whether criticising the recruitment centres helps the enemy, and they do not agree. At the same time the forums are clearly skewed: DOU is dominated by relatively well-paid IT workers, a few active accounts contribute a large share of comments, and the mood varies between subreddits, some of which others regard as gathering places for "anti-mobilisation" users.

Back to the "economic reservation" thread. Three weeks on, there had been no official response to the proposal; on 18 October one user drew a conclusion:

AnalysisFour days later someone posted a new comment in the same thread, and the debate flared up for another day. In Ukraine, staying is a choice recalculated every day, and the forums are the most honest, and the noisiest, ledger of that calculation.