Tragic toll: Bodies in Tisza River reflect Ukraine's war weariness

It has been seven weeks since Ivan Podmalewski was supposed to return to the front line when rescuers pulled his body from the river at the Ukraine-Romania border.

Like dozens of other men who drowned in the Tisza, he tried to cross the border. However, unlike many other drowning victims, Ivan was not fleeing mobilization. He had been fighting for two years, and the lack of demobilization forced him to seek a way out of the army.

His family noted that they saw the toll the war took on the stout 32-year-old, but he never showed how deep that exhaustion ran. "I don't know what was happening in his soul," said Lyubov Pidmalowska, the soldier's mother.

"Bodies in the river are a grim manifestation of one of Ukraine's biggest challenges: the war is entering its third summer with no clear path to victory,” writes WSJ.

Many people who were initially mobilized to repel the Russian invasion are dead, missing, or injured, and those remaining are exhausted from more than two years of brutal fighting.

"We have to do this so the boys can have normal rotations. Then morale will improve," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an interview with the BBC in May, after lowering the mobilization age from 27 to 25 and signing an unpopular mobilization law.

According to a poll conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 58% of Ukrainians support continued mobilization, while 35% are against it.

However, WSJ reports that the draft campaign has also caused tension in society. "Across the country, men are hiding from employees of TCC” (the equivalent of the Military Recruitment Office).

The borders for men aged 18 to 60 in Ukraine are closed. This benefits smugglers, who charge between CAD 5,400 and CAD 20,200 to help people escape the country.

Border guards catch dozens of men every day. "This is a dramatic change compared to the turbulent early days of the war when so many men volunteered to fight," notes WSJ.

The mother of the deceased soldier recalls that her son's first year of service was successful.

The 32-year-old participated in the Kharkiv counter-offensive, and last spring, as Ukraine prepared for a new major offensive, he was sent for training in France.

However, hopes for a breakthrough quickly faded "in the face of harsh realities of Russian defence. Ammunition began to run out as a political stalemate in the U.S. delayed the delivery of a crucial aid package", writes the newspaper.

Podmalewski told his mother that everything was fine. But a comrade who served with him in the 148th Brigade admitted that he and the rest of the unit were exhausted. "We begged for rotation," said the soldier with the call sign "Horets." Protocol prohibits him from providing his first and last name.

According to Horets, Podmalewski complained that his commander did not give him permission to travel abroad to meet his family in Slovakia and also paid him too little money. Since the beginning of the war, he had received leave only three times.

From the battlefields in eastern Ukraine, he returned to his village in the west. Due to the intensification of mobilization in Ukraine, 25-year-old Valery Minikhinov could also return home.

His mother persuaded him to return from Kyiv and hide from the draft. "I was afraid I would lose my son," says Ninel Kopekova.

His mother did not know – as WSJ writes – that Valeriy decided to escape via the Tisza with the help of a smuggler, whom he paid CAD 5,400. The day after his disappearance, Minikhinov's girlfriend told his mother about plans to travel to Sweden, where he had already found a job.

Valery's journey ended about 40 kilometres down the river from Velykyi Bychkiv - his hometown. Rescuers retrieved his body from the river.