Ukraine's mobilization campaign picks up despite faltering enthusiasm
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[July 15, 2024]
By Dan Peleschuk
KYIV (Reuters) - Seeing the military patrol handing out call-up papers
on the outskirts of Kyiv, one man slipped into a nearby store. Another
refused to even stop for the officers. Others, however, quietly obliged.
While men may be coming round to Ukraine's ramped-up mobilization drive
to replenish troop numbers more than 28 months since Russia's invasion,
they are less eager to fight than before, said a draft officer, who uses
the call sign "Fantomas".
"Now, as far as I know, most of the queues (at draft offices) are people
who want to obtain some sort of exemption (from fighting)," said the
36-year-old, who was accompanied by Reuters on a recent draft patrol in
the Ukrainian capital.
The combat veteran is on the front lines of the effort to redouble the
draft despite waning public enthusiasm for wartime service as military
analysts describe regenerating troop manpower as one of Kyiv's central
battlefield challenges.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy lowered the draft age to 25 from 27 in
April and signed off on an overhaul of the mobilization process that
entered force in May, obliging men under 60 to renew their personal data
at draft offices or online.
Though recruitment numbers remain shrouded in wartime secrecy, some
political and military officials have said the changes, including a
campaign to increase voluntary recruitment, have got the mobilization
effort back on track after two months.
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The Ukrainian military told Reuters in a written statement that the
conscription rate had more than doubled in May and June compared to the
previous two months, without providing the figures.
Spokesperson Bohdan Senyk described that as a "positive trend". The
average age of a mobilized soldier remained unchanged at around 40.
DEMOBILIZATION
Strengthened by long-delayed Western aid, Ukraine's forces have
struggled for months to hold the line against Russian troops inching
forward in the east.
Many weary troops are desperate to be replaced after more than two years
of virtually non-stop service with no clarity on when they will be
demobilized from an armed forces of around 1 million.
Asked about a figure of 200,000 additional troops cited in a German
newspaper, Roman Kostenko, secretary of parliament's national defense
committee estimated that the military could enlist that many by the
year's end if the process continued at its current pace.
That, he said, could allow Ukraine to consider legislation to demobilize
some troops, though the interior minister warned doing so without
replacing a proportional share of them could weaken the front.
Mathieu Boulègue, a defense analyst for the Washington-based Center for
European Policy Analysis, said the 200,000 estimate was encouraging but
that the more critical task would be training them and distributing them
to the front correctly.
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![](../images/071524PIX/news_o35.jpg)
A recruiters officer with the call sign 'Fantomas' speaks with a man
on a street as he checks papers of men and hands out military
summonses, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine July 3,
2024. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
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Ukraine needs to "invest human capital smartly and efficiently where
it is needed. Because in as much as you can get anyone to drive a
truck or clean toilets, you can't get effective warfighters that
easily," he said.
Russia, meanwhile, is recruiting around 30,000 troops per month for
its war effort while suffering "very high" losses, a senior NATO
official said on Tuesday. He added that Moscow lacked the munitions
and troops to start a major offensive.
PUBLIC MISGIVINGS
Since the mobilization overhaul, some draft offices have struggled
to cope with the influx of men who have come to register or update
their data by the July 16 deadline.
"More people are coming than we are able to accept," said a deputy
head of the draft office where Fantomas works. "Sometimes processing
drags on to 1 o'clock at night."
The official, who requested anonymity, echoed Fantomas and said a
"very, very big" portion of men were seeking exemptions, though he
insisted things were on track.
"We're fulfilling our assigned tasks. I wouldn't say to 100%, but
not bad."
Reports of draft corruption and social media footage of scuffles
between recruiters and citizens soured the public mood in the
lead-up to the springtime rule changes.
In an April survey commissioned by public broadcaster Suspilne,
around 50% of Ukrainians said they believed mobilization was going
poorly, and 60% said they had a negative perception of draft
offices.
Facing public opposition, lawmakers stopped short of pushing through
more severe sanctions against draft-dodgers as part of the overhaul.
Fantomas, who was wounded in eastern Ukraine last year, said 70% of
his interactions with people he approaches on the street are
positive.
He and other military officials have said conflicts such as those
captured on film are rare, often torn out of context and exploited
by pro-Russian accounts to discredit recruiters, but have been
successful in blunting enthusiasm.
He admitted he had once been attacked on patrol, but said he refused
to fight back for fear of being caught on camera.
"The one part where I would be defending myself would make it into a
video, and only that would be made to go viral."
(Additional reporting by Yuriy Muravyov and Stefaniia Bern; Editing
by Tom Balmforth and Peter Graff)
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