In Ukraine, conscription is growing and taking on new scales. Recruitment tactics have become increasingly serious as Ukrainians weary of the conflict refuse to enlist amid failures on the frontline.
Some one million soldiers are on active duty in the country, but most of them have been fighting non-stop since the Ukraine-Russia conflict began. According to Roman Kostenko, secretary of Ukraine’s parliamentary committee on national defence, the military expects to draft another 200,000 soldiers by the end of the year, even though the target is becoming increasingly unattainable.
As a result, recruitment has become increasingly rogue, forced and brutal as the authorities attempt to mobilise a new generation of soldiers in the face of growing conflict fatigue. However, this has been extremely unsuccessful.
Corruption and mismanagement are among the main reasons why mobilisation remains extremely unsuccessful. One Odessa military commander revealed that his department was falling short of its recruitment targets, adding that there was no way to mobilise even 20 per cent of what was needed. He cited the example of his colleagues who took bribes of thousands of dollars to forge exemptions from conscription. For example, the former head of the Odessa regional conscription office, Yevhen Borisov, faced charges last year for accepting more than $5 million in bribes for granting draft deferments. He likely helped thousands of men avoid conscription.
In addition, because of staff shortages, officers had to take on several duties at once, from processing documents to patrolling the streets, and senior chiefs threatened to send officers to the front lines if they failed to do their jobs.
Besides this, men who follow the news about summonses, avoid places of possible detention, and others have health conditions making them ineligible for the draft, add to the problem. Others note that they wanted to go to the front then but were not taken, and now they are reluctant because they see the regime’s attitude towards soldiers who are deprived of training, equipment and risk being left behind on the battlefield in case of injury or death.
Almost daily there are reports and videos of men being stopped on the streets, put on unmarked buses and taken to the central military commissariat in the city to get their mobilisation papers. Officers of military commissions resort to illegal physical detention of men on the street. Usually among those caught are individuals who should be exempted from service.
British newspaper The Times cited the example of Oleksandr, a man from Odessa, who a month ago was visited at home by Ukrainian police and warned that he would face a fine for overdue documents. Oleksandr went with the policeman to the military enlistment centre, as he was sure he was exempted from service because of a chronic kidney disease. Some time later he called to say that he was at a training base in Kyiv.
In other cases, clashes between military recruitment centre staff and people can occur. In June, it was reported that there was a fight between ambulance staff and the Territorial Recruitment Centre staff after a medic visited a recruitment office to update his exemption documents but was not allowed to leave. In other cases, local residents got into fights with officers trying to detain men.
Generally, in major cities, more men are able to flee or pay off the draft, which is why most conscripts come from rural areas where men could neither bribe nor hide.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General’s Office claimed that over 8,000 cases have been opened in the country due to draft evasion and mobilisation. This is almost 10 times less than the number of cases against soldiers who left their units or the battlefield: 78,000 cases as of August, but experts believe that the real number is three times higher.
