Fight or flight? Ukraine’s youth in a quandary as draft widens
“I’m frightened, but Russia frightens me more.” Vladislav Fomin, 27
The front line is 480km away, yet for the nervous young men of Podil, a Kyiv neighbourhood known for its nightclubs and coffee shop culture, the war suddenly seems much closer.
“I’m frightened,” said Dima, 31, chain-smoking his way through a friend’s pack of tobacco. “My girlfriend says it’s up to me. But I don’t want to go.”
At the end of last year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced plans to conscript 500,000 soldiers. Last week he finally enacted legislation that will reduce the minimum age of conscription from 27 to 25 and scrap the medical exemption that deemed some men “partially eligible”.
Short of munitions and short of men, Ukraine’s generals say there is no alternative to mass mobilisation to stop the Russian advance. They have ordered the construction of ditches, trenches and anti-tank “dragon’s teeth” behind the front lines in anticipation of further retreats.
On the battlefield, Ukraine is outgunned seven to one as a result of the United States stalling over a US$60 billion (NZ$100m) aid package. Zelenskyy has warned allies to expect more territorial concessions and urged Ukrainian men who have fled abroad to return home to serve their country.
In the bright spring sunshine of Kyiv, however, questions about mobilisation elicited monosyllabic responses.
Two years since Russian troops withdrew from the gates of Kyiv, an uneasy sense of normality has returned to the Ukrainian capital, albeit punctuated by devastating missile strikes. In grungy Podil, the techno nightclubs have reopened.
Clutching his coffee tightly, Dima, a video producer who refused to give his real name, said he was taking precautions to dodge the draft. He only travels between Ukraine’s cities at night, to avoid enlistment officers, and has saved thousands of euros to pay a bribe.
“I don’t want to serve,” he said, his eyes shifting behind thick glasses. “I don’t know what else to say.”
A year ago, it was Russia that appeared to be running out of men willing to fight. The mercenary Wagner Group offered murderers and rapists their freedom in exchange for serving on the front line. President Vladimir Putin was forced publicly to announce plans to recruit hundreds of thousands of men in a move that appeared fraught with political risk.
Yet fresh from another sham election victory and buoyed by the death of his political rival, Alexei Navalny, Putin has found a plentiful source of manpower by tempting uneducated youngsters from impoverished regions thousands of kilometres from Moscow with the offer of wellpaid jobs in the military.
Russia invaded Ukraine with 360,000 troops in 2022. That number has now swelled to 470,000, even accounting for an estimated 315,000 casualties. The annual spring conscription drive will recruit another 150,000 Russians.
Western partners dithering over the supply of further weapons are confronted by a brutal calculation: the population of unoccupied Ukraine is estimated to be about 31 million, compared with 144 million in Russia. The longer the war continues, the greater the fear that sheer numbers will win out.
Ukraine, a country suffering from the lowest fertility rate in the world, has attempted so far to spare its youth the horrors of war. But with the average age of a Ukrainian soldier now 43, the impulse to protect the country’s future is losing ground to the urgent needs of the present.
As debate rages over who should fight, Ukrainian MPs have submitted more than 4000 amendments to laws working their way through the parliament that would limit a soldier’s service to three years. One change would even adopt the Wagner Group’s tactics by conscripting Ukrainian prisoners.
For young people in Kyiv terrified by the prospect of joining the army, tools are available to help them escape the war.
In the Ukrainian capital, hundreds of thousands scan Telegram channels for coded messages about how to dodge the draft agents.
The mobilisation drive has been ramping up. By mid-morning in Kyiv, small queues form outside the enlistment offices.
Gaggles of 16-year-olds register their details for the first time, something they will have to do until they are 60, even if they do not have to serve for more than a decade. But across three draft centres in different parts of Kyiv visited by the Sunday Times, men in their twenties and thirties are a rare sight.
“All those who were willing to volunteer have already signed up,” says Andriy Bessarabchyk, 52, limping out of a drafting centre on the left bank of the River Dnieper. A special forces officer in the 1990s, Bessarabchyk enlisted in the first days after Russia’s invasion and served as a commander in the National Guard. The strain of moving anti-tank weapons and body armour injured his hip, putting an end to his fighting days.
Now his 32-year-old son may have to take his place. “If the fighting gets any harder at the front line, I will drive him there myself. Sooner or later, he will have to fight,” says Bessarabchyk.
Before the war, Kyiv ranked among the most distinctive clubbing destinations in the world. On a recent Saturday, DJs from Germany, France and the US performed at Closer nightclub, which opened at 3pm and closed at 10.30pm to meet curfew.
Inside, clubber Boris Khmilevsky, 28, described his work as a combat medic in the frontline town of Kreminna. “People have gotten used to the idea of the front line being distant, that it’s fixed,” he said. “But the truth is that the Russians could break through at any moment. We could be fighting for Kyiv again. People don’t understand the threat.”
Handing out condoms nearby for an LGBT charity, Vladislav Fomin, 27, said draft officers had stopped him in central Kyiv a few weeks ago.
At that point he was still too young to fight, but he acknowledged that his time may soon come.
“My mum is urging me to leave the country. But what would I do abroad? If I get called up, I will serve,” he said. “I’m frightened, but Russia frightens me more.”