More than 200,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled their country to Germany since the beginning of the war with Russia, according to the federal government’s written response to a question posed by the Alternative for Germany’s foreign policy spokesperson Petr Bystron.
Despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration banning men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country, a total of 203,640 male Ukrainian citizens facing conscription have arrived in Germany since February last year.
The German federal government stated that 176,474 Ukrainian conscripts were still residing in Germany at the end of June this year.
“The numbers show clearly: Ukrainians want peace,” said Bystron in response, reiterating the AfD’s call for “immediate peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia under OSCE mediation.”
He claimed that hundreds of thousands of “Ukrainians of military age have fled to Germany to escape senseless death” and that “according to media reports, another 650,000 are in the EU, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.”
The AfD parliamentary group submitted a peace initiative motion to the Bundestag in January this year, calling on the federal government to advocate the deployment of an international peace delegation led by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine.
“No one can win this war, and only if we finally accept that and work for a peaceful solution will peace have a chance,” said Alexander Gauland, the founder and honorary chairman of the AfD.
Bystron himself visited Belarus in November last year to lobby for such an outcome, telling the German newspaper Bild his mission was to explore whether Belarus could help to push for peace between the two nations and also improve bilateral relations between Germany and Belarus.
