Turn your anger into a weapon, urges Kyiv in pitch to recruits
In a land already tired and bleeding from a year of all-out war, men like Hlib Babchyk are seen as either stout-hearted heroes or hotheads with a death wish.
The former shop worker has just volunteered for Ukraine’s front lines, despite having no previous military experience and being aware that the body count is already fearfully high. To many Ukrainians, his decision is a welcome sign that there is no sapping yet of the country’s warrior spirit. To others – including his own parents – it seems like madness, given that everyone now knows the risks.
“I didn’t tell my parents before I signed up – they think my decision is crazy, and that I’ll die,” he told The Daily Telegraph during infantry drills in a patch of ice-bound woods. “But parents always worry about their kids: there’s a war on, and we have to win it.”
Ukraine is banking on young volunteers like Mr Babchyk to sustain them into the conflict’s second year.
The 20-year-old is among a new intake of volunteers for the country’s National Guard, which has just launched a major recruitment campaign.
Aware that mottos such as “duty, patriotism and sacrifice” are already well-worn from the past 12 months, commanders have devised new recruitment slogans. Their chosen pitch is less Lord Kitchener and more Charles Bronson or Dirty Harry: come and get revenge.
“The campaign motto is, ‘Turn your anger into a weapon’,” Ruslan Muzychuk, a spokesman for the National Guard of Ukraine, told The Telegraph in Kyiv last week. “Are we tired of defending our country? No. Are we tired of cities being destroyed by Russian rockets and children getting killed? Yes.”
As the nation of 44million mulls a year of existential conflict, the question of just how many more citizens will have to take up arms looms large. This time last year, volunteers formed long queues at military recruitment centres, doubling the ranks of a standing army already 200,000 strong.
Much as that army has won praise for fending off a far mightier enemy, success has had a heavy price. While Kyiv’s government does not disclose figures on casualties, British military officials estimate the figure at up to 10,000 dead and up 90,000 wounded. They believe Russia has lost up to 60,000, with 140,000 wounded. British officials attribute the higher Russian death-to-injury ratio to poorer frontline medical care.
Ukraine has so far not had to use the crude press-gang methods deployed by Vladimir Putin, who introduced partial mobilisation last September and has also recruited from jails. But with casualties rising steadily – and Mr Putin threatening a fresh spring offensive – Ukrainian commanders must also replenish their ranks. “The Russians are putting in more troops every day,” Mr Muzychuk said. “So we have to be ready for the consequences”.
Hence this month’s TV and poster campaign by the National Guard, a gendarmerie force of around 90,000