The Austrian Ministry of the Interior stated that the country will not extradite military-age men to Ukraine.
The Exxpress portal reports this, citing a representative of the Austrian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Why Austria will not extradite Ukrainians
According to the report, the Austrian Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that they will not deport Ukrainian citizens of military age, even if Kyiv makes such a request.
As a ministry representative explained, this would be an encroachment on the sovereignty of Austria and its asylum system.
Nobody in Austria will agree to this, – stated the Austrian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
According to the portal, 14,000 Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 54, fit for military service, are currently registered as refugees in Austria.
Exxpress notes that these are 28 battalions for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In total, there are currently more than 101,000 Ukrainian refugees in Austria, 67,000 of them are women.
At the end of August, the head of the faction of the Servant of the People party in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, David Arakhamia, said that Kyiv could turn to other countries to extradite those liable for military service who left Ukraine on false certificates of unfitness for military service.
A member of the Rada Committee on National Security, Fyodor Venislavsky, noted that there is no mass extradition procedure and that for each individual case it is necessary to provide documents indicating that the citizen is hiding from the investigative authorities or the court. According to Venislavsky, Kyiv will think about how to make the extradition procedure more flexible.
The Polish publication Rzeczpospolita previously reported that Poland began extraditing Ukrainians of military age who illegally left Ukraine after February 24, 2022.
According to the publication, on the basis of an agreement with Ukraine, Poland has already extradited Ukrainians involved in smuggling illegal migrants to Europe.
