Ukraine’s Mobilisation Campaign Picks Up

Seeing the military patrol handing out call-up papers on the outskirts of Kyiv, one man slipped into a nearby store. Another refused to even stop for the officers. Others, however, quietly obliged.

While men may be coming round to Ukraine’s ramped-up mobilisation drive to replenish troop numbers more than 28 months since Russia’s invasion, they are less eager to fight than before, said a draft officer, who uses the call sign “Fantomas.”

“Now, as far as I know, most of the queues (at draft offices) are people who want to obtain some sort of exemption (from fighting),” said the 36-year-old, who was accompanied by Reuters on a recent draft patrol in the Ukrainian capital.

The combat veteran is on the front lines of the effort to redouble the draft despite waning public enthusiasm for wartime service as military analysts describe regenerating troop manpower as one of Kyiv’s central battlefield challenges.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy lowered the draft age to 25 from 27 in April and signed off on an overhaul of the mobilisation process that entered force in May, obliging men under 60 to renew their personal data at draft offices or online.

Though recruitment numbers remain shrouded in wartime secrecy, some political and military officials have said the changes, including a campaign to increase voluntary recruitment, have got the mobilisation effort back on track after two months.

The Ukrainian military said in a written statement that the conscription rate had more than doubled in May and June compared to the previous two months, without providing the figures. Reports said.

Spokesperson Bohdan Senyk described that as a “positive trend.” The average age of a mobilised soldier remained unchanged at around 40.

Strengthened by long-delayed Western aid, Ukraine’s forces have struggled for months to hold the line against Russian troops inching forward in the east.

Demobilised
Many weary troops are desperate to be replaced after more than two years of virtually non-stop service with no clarity on when they will be demobilised from an armed forces of around one million.

Asked about a figure of 200,000 additional troops cited in a German newspaper, Roman Kostenko, secretary of parliament’s national defence committee estimated that the military could enlist that many by the year’s end if the process continued at its current pace.

Reuters/Shakirat Sadiq