Conscription Didn’t Work, So Ukraine Trying Soft Tactics To Recruit Soldiers

Far from the trenches, at orderly new centres across Ukraine, civilian recruiters armed with laptops and info packs offer patriotic volunteers opportunities to join the war.

As Ukraine’s efforts to conscript enough men to fight Russia are stymied by public scepticism, defence officials and military units are embarking on a multi-pronged charm offensive to recruit a citizens’ army to resist the invasion.

This softer call-up is being conducted on job-search sites and outreach centres, as well as billboards and social media, and offers a wartime novelty: an element of choice.

Candidates can select their precise unit and roles suiting their skills, for instance, as well as how long they will serve.

On city streets, billboards of Ukrainian soldiers implore citizens to join up and defend their homeland, offering QR codes for convenience. Online, the 93rd Mechanised Brigade assures countrymen that “Everyone can do it!” in a glossy video campaign showing civilians, such as a chef and tractor driver, switching to analogous army roles as battlefield cook and tank driver.

Ukraine is desperate to replenish its drained and depleted forces, which are vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Russia along a 1,000-km front as the war enters a third grinding year.

The initial patriotic flood of volunteers who flocked to the army following the invasion of February 2022 has dried up. The government has acknowledged its conscription drive has run into difficulties, with thousands of people evading the draft and some seeking to flee abroad rather than risk the trenches.

A mobilisation law that comes into force next month obliges men to update their draft data with authorities, although it was stripped of tough punishments for draft evaders after a public outcry.

Reuters is the first news outlet to detail the extent of the defence ministry’s outreach plan, designed to combat public distrust about enlistment and plug a gaping hole in the military by offering recruits a greater sense of control over their fate.

Thirteen of the new recruitment centres have been opened since mid-February and the government plans to expand the number to 30 by the middle of the year, said Oleksiy Bezhevets, a ministry adviser who is overseeing the drive.

At the first centre, in Kviv, about 300 people visited in the first month, Bezhevets said, without specifying if any signed up. The defence ministry is also working with four private recruitment companies to fill military vacancies, he added.

He conceded the plans were no “magic pill” for the military, though he said the range of roles needing to be filled was so broad that it didn’t matter so much what people chose.

Ukraine’s conscription effort, launched in the wake of the invasion, has been hampered by local media reports of corruption, official abuse and administrative incompetence. Social media has been flooded with clips of officers corralling men off the street or barging into homes.

Common concerns about military service include inadequate training, poor commanders and the fact that there is no cap on the length of service, according to a February poll by Kyiv-based research agency Info Sapiens for media outlet Texty.org.

In the survey of 400 army-eligible men, only 35% said they were prepared to serve if called up.

Ukraine does not release figures on conscripts or voluntary recruits, which it deems sensitive information. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy nonetheless acknowledged shortcomings in mobilisation when he fired the heads of regional draft offices last August citing reports of corruption and official abuse.

Bezhevets said the goal of the defence ministry’s recruiting campaign was to triple the number of volunteers who join up. In the longer term, he added, at least a third of Ukraine armed forces should be staffed through voluntary recruitment.

As part of the hunt, the defence ministry has begun working with four leading job-search sites over the past six months, said Bezhevets, adding that so far around 100,000 applicants in total had replied to more than 10,000 vacancies advertised.

Lobby X, one of the sites, offers a user-friendly platform that allows jobseekers to search through military branches, from the marines to military intelligence, and categories of jobs, from artillery gunner to cook or press officer.

Like any ordinary job postings, the vacancies list responsibilities, requirements and benefits including monthly pay, which ranges from around $500 to $3,000. And voluntary contracts can be signed for specific terms starting from three years, or until the end of martial law.

In March, Kyiv’s top general said the military would need to mobilize fewer people than the initial target of up to 500,000 more Ukrainians, in part because of volunteers.

“We expect that we will have enough people capable of defending their motherland,” Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi told the Ukrinform news agency. “I am talking not only about the mobilised but also about volunteer fighters.”

The official recruitment push has been matched on the ground by military units reaching out directly to civilians.

(With inputs from Reuters)