On February 17, Andrei and his wife boarded a plane to Miami and flew to Ukraine to bury their father. By that time, the United States was Andrey's permanent residence, where he had spent more than five years, writes DW.

A week after his arrival in his homeland, the Russian invasion began and Ukraine declared a general mobilization, forbidding men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country.. Now Andrey is stuck in Ukraine with a single suitcase, the main content of which is winter clothes..

We meet Andrei at the moment when he says goodbye to his wife at the central bus station in Lviv. His wife is not a citizen of Ukraine (she wished to keep further details secret). Her tourist visa has expired and she is returning to Florida..

Andrey will soon be all alone. His home and work are in Florida, his mother and sister went to Latvia to escape the war, his father passed away..

Bureaucratic impasse Andriy's situation may seem bad luck to some, but there are a lot of people like him: Vitaliy is a Czech hospital orderly who took a leave of absence to visit his parents in Ukraine three days before the start of the war; Vito is a museum employee in the United Arab Emirates who flew to Ukraine on February 17 and now has no income to support his family; Aleksey, who returned to Ukraine from Poland to fight, and after the end of his service, cannot return to his family and work in Gdansk.

DW spoke to eight men who found themselves in a similar situation.. Some of them continue to work remotely, others have taken unpaid leave in the hope of returning to work.. Most of them broke up with either lovers or family.. And they all say the travel ban caused them emotional distress and financial loss..

On paper - everything is fine, in reality - it is impossible Hoping to create a mutual aid group, Andrey opened a Telegram channel for men like him. Now it has more than 130 members, but Andrei believes that this is just the tip of the iceberg.. " - They probably think: "

Mykola, a Ukrainian scientist at a research institute in Germany, is another one stuck in Ukraine. He went to Kyiv on February 21 to complete the paperwork for his Ukrainian wife so she could get a German visa.. His appointment to visit the German embassy was canceled because the embassy was closed. Then the borders were closed for Ukrainian men.

According to Nikolai, it was difficult for him to get help or even sympathy because his legal situation is so complicated.. " " Men who permanently live abroad are technically exempt from the travel ban, but the border guards require a special stamp in the passport, which was not mandatory before the war, and now, according to all the men DW spoke to, it is impossible to get one..

Responding to numerous questions from the injured men on Facebook, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine released a statement. She confirmed that the only acceptable proof of permanent residence abroad is a passport stamp from the Ukrainian authorities.. “If a person really lived abroad,” the border service writes, “but did not register his departure in accordance with the official procedure, unfortunately, he cannot leave Ukraine.”.

Endless quest To get this stamp, a citizen of Ukraine must first obtain permission from the state migration department, then deregister at the local military registration and enlistment office, and also deregister at the place of residence. Before the Russian invasion, this procedure took up to three months.. In the context of the outbreak of war, many administrative institutions in the east and southeast of the country were destroyed or closed by Russia. Even in Ukrainian-controlled territory, many of them have stopped working or their databases have been blocked.. In this case, it is no longer possible to apply for a stamp.. "

DW was able to find out from the administration of Andrey's hometown in the Kyiv region that the "

A rule from Soviet times Volodymyr Monastyrsky of the law firm Denton, who wrote for the Ukrainian online newspaper Pravda before the war, calls the rule a " According to the World Migration Report, about 6 million Ukrainians lived abroad in 2020.

“They find some stupid legal requirements that didn’t have to be followed before, and they say: “Okay, now it will be mandatory,” says Nikolai..

Neither the Border Guard Service of Ukraine nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs responded to repeated requests to clarify whether they were aware of this problem..

Nikolay believes that he is lucky to some extent: his wife is with him in Ukraine, and he can continue his scientific work remotely. But some of those DW spoke to were out of touch with their normal lives.. Alexander Dyubanov, project manager at the German-owned Froli Baltic plastics plant in Latvia, says he traveled to Kyiv on February 20 to get a Ukrainian passport for his newborn son.. To date, he has not seen his wife and small child for three months.. At the same time, Alexander fears that he will lose his job and, consequently, the opportunity to support his family..

Men are stigmatized for wanting to leave Ukraine Men interviewed by DW indicate that another problem for them is the stigma around this topic. Andrei describes the ridicule that men are subjected to if they complain about the travel ban. " But we just want to work to feed our families." He adds that he donates part of his income to help volunteers and the military..

According to Nikolai, he himself was already thinking about how a man can best serve his country.. " - Need to be critical of yourself.

Some things I'm ready to do for my country and some I'm not."

Fighting Pessimism After his wife left, Andrei moved to Kyiv, where he spent the last ten days staying overnight in a hotel. He calls his wife every day to wake her up, and again before going to bed.

" " Like others in his situation, he understands why the Ukrainian government does not address his issue as a priority.. But at the same time, he believes that he does not ask for so much: just let him go home.