Ukraine military on charm offensive to fill ranks
from the trenches, at orderly new centres across Ukraine, civilian recruiters armed with laptops and info packs offer the patriotic 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 multipronged 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.
Natalia Kalmykova, a deputy defence minister, said military planners recognised that in a democratic country, giving people some choice could be key in attracting them to the military.
“The people who come to defend our country now are not those who chose the military as their career: it’s civilians,” she said in Kyiv. “And civilians are used to being able to choose.”
Kyiv is desperate to replenish its drained and depleted forces, which are vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Russia along a 1,000km 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.
The Defence Ministry’s outreach plan is 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 Lviv, 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.
“The main goal is to give people the opportunity to conquer their fears and enter the military,” said Bezhevets, among more than a half-dozen people involved in the new drive for voluntary recruits who were interviewed for this article, also including recruiters and service members.
Michael Kofman, a military specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the recruitment drive was positive for the army but would not be a decisive solution to a severe shortfall of troops that could only be fully addressed by mobilisation.
“It likely needs hundreds of thousands of men to sustain the fight — in particular infantry, which few are likely to volunteer for, because it’s the most likely combat arm to suffer casualties,” he added.
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 per cent said they were prepared to serve if called up.
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 had replied to more than 10,000 vacancies advertised.