Ukrainians who volunteered to defend the homeland are exhausted, wounded or killed. And many of those who were supposed to replace them after 21 months of war prefer not to do so. Ukrainian society is at a crucial moment: the second major wave of recruitment to stop the Russian invader. The Ukrainian armed forces and civilian authorities have intensified measures to conscript men between the ages of 27 and 60, including under threat of prison. The government faces a double challenge: it must confront the invader with new troops and deal with the lack of motivation of a large part of the population who do not want to go to war.
Kiril Babii is a Ukrainian artillery officer serving on one of the bloodiest fronts of the war in Bakhmut. He comes from Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Since then he has lived in Kharkiv. He knows what it’s like to lose his home. When the Russians began their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he did not hesitate and volunteered. Like him, nearly half a million men – and 62,000 women – have done it, especially in the past year. On November 20, Babii posted a text on Instagram that had a major impact on the intra-Ukrainian debate: He announced that he would leave the army in February 2024, after two years of war. Babii expects he will go to prison for desertion, but believes the recruitment system is unfair.
“A month ago I asked myself a question: What if the war lasted five years, Kiril? And I started to cry. It’s two in the morning. I don’t want to stay here for three more years because of the war. I’m mentally exhausted. Rest permits are not useful.” This is what Babii wrote, words that other Ukrainian soldiers have repeated to EL PAÍS: “The days of rest when they arrive [de media, pueden ser dos semanas al año], they are not used to disconnect. The brain continues to think about the war.” Babii’s text captures the opinion of many of his comrades: “It is wrong that those of us who mobilized voluntarily and defended our country have such poor expectations.” [de futuro]. In fact, there is a reserve of mobilized people for this.” This officer concluded: “That is why I am writing this, so that there are changes, changes that turn the army from a prison into a well-organized institution for the defense of the country in a long-term war transform.”
The Babii protest is not an isolated case and President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed in his video message last Friday that his government will introduce a new system of mobilization but also demobilization of troops who have been fighting for almost two months.
EL PAÍS’s special envoy visited several cities in western and eastern Ukraine last month; from Lviv to Kherson, from Mikolaiv to Dnipro; from Kyiv to Zaporizhia. In all of them, the interviews with a dozen young people from different social backgrounds ended with the same result: they don’t want to go to war. In Lviv, the city in the country where Ukrainian nationalism is strongest, Stanislav, a hotel receptionist, complains that so many people from eastern Ukraine continue to speak Russian. When asked if he was willing to come forward, he declined: “Why so many deaths? Make 20 kilometers progress? That makes no sense”.
Stanislav was referring to the minimal progress the army had made in the major counteroffensive that began last June on the Zaporizhzhia front. The first three months of the offensive, between June and August, caused the most casualties among Ukrainian troops. The Ukrainian armed forces do not provide data on their loss of life, but US military sources assured the New York Times last August that the number of wounded soldiers since the start of the invasion could be 120,000 and the number of dead could be 70,000. There is no data on possible victims in the last three months.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
The majority in Ukraine continues to support the war effort to stop the Russian invasion. This is suggested by polls such as the American Population Center Gallup last October, which found that 60% of Ukrainians are “determined to keep fighting until they win the war.” According to Gallup, by victory in the war, 91% of them mean the expulsion of Russian troops from the entire Ukrainian territory. In the same study published by Gallup in October 2022, the majority in favor of continuing the war was 70%.
The Ukrainian General Staff is keeping secret the number of people it is integrating into the army and the replacements needed, but military sources on the Zaporizhzhia front estimated to this newspaper last October that 200,000 new soldiers are needed.
The hotel where Stanislav works is located on Svoboda Avenue in the center of Lviv. The weekend before curfew [a medianoche], the bars and liquor stores in the area are full of young people stocking up for a party. In November, Stanislaw witnessed a military patrol from a recruiting office forcibly taking away a group of young people in a van. In the last two months, videos of situations like this have increased. These videos, recorded on a casual observer’s cell phone, circulated on social networks, but now they appear frequently in the media, in articles denouncing cases of abuse of power.
The army has no power to force a citizen to accept its subpoenas. It is the civil administration that can do this. Recruitment agencies may send subpoenas by mail, deliver them in person on public streets, or during home visits. Each person is free to sign the acknowledgment of receipt at this time. If a person repeatedly refuses to appear at the recruiting office – be it To, to explain his personal situation and the reasons why he should not be called up, to take medical examinations or to join the army – legal proceedings will be initiated against him can result in a fine or a prison sentence of two to five years.
Zelensky visits a command post in Kupiansk, Kharkiv region this week.HANDOUT (AFP)
Since this fall, military recruiting patrols on public streets have been increased. Oleksii Danilov, secretary of the National Security Council, confirmed to The Guardian newspaper on November 27 that a new recruitment program would be announced. This plan envisages the hiring of two large personnel service providers who will determine in more detail which citizens can be hired based on their studies or profession. Danilov assured that this would give the new recruits more confidence that they would complete their tasks in accordance with their training.
End of “friendly mobilization”
The Pravda newspaper published a report on November 1st suggesting that the period of “friendly mobilization” must end. This Ukrainian media interviewed a military chaplain, Andrii Zelinskii, who rejected the dichotomy between almost normal life in cities far from the front lines like Kiev and the combat zones: “In Ukraine today there is an alternative reality, an alternative to pain.” Wounds, death , War. And that is the greatest threat to resistance against the enemy.”
But not everything is fun in the Ukrainian capital, there is also fear. Rostislav is 28 years old and since last September he always goes out wearing boots, a jacket and a military backpack. He is not a soldier, but he believes that he will not be approached like that on the street by the soldiers from the recruiting commissariat. Irina is 30 years old and an accountant in a company. Find a partner with the dating app Tinder. A man with whom he began a conversation in October lives in an eastern suburb of Kiev. She asked to meet at a cafe in the city center, but he declined, admitting that he did not leave his neighborhood because he did not want to take public transport and be stopped by a recruiting patrol. Media outlet Telegraf warned in a November 27 article that many men were limiting their travel abroad to avoid mobilization.
A paradigmatic example of what goes through the minds of many Ukrainians is Oleksandr, the false name of a 27-year-old man from Zaporizhia who prefers to remain anonymous. The war front is 25 kilometers from their town. Oleksandr suffers from depression because he knows that he could be called up sooner or later since he does not have a permanent job. Salaries in the army are high compared to the Ukrainian average, ranging from 750 to 2,500 euros per month, depending on the risk and responsibility. But there are soldiers in his circle of friends, and everyone advises him to do everything he can to avoid this: “I have two great friends; One was assigned to a special unit and demobilized two months ago because his mother was sick and he had to look after her. The first thing he told me was that there was chaos in the army and that he had no plans to return. That fall, my other friend paid $5,500 to a guide who took him for two hours through forests to the Slovakian border. Now he is out of the country, he didn’t want to go to war.” According to martial law, men who are of legal age and up to 65 are not allowed to leave the country.
Oleksandr’s cousin is on the wanted list because he failed To with the local military office, a mandatory procedure for all adult men until retirement age. The army showed up at his mother’s house in the last week of November to deliver another request; His son is hiding in Kyiv. The news that touched him most was shared on Instagram by a good friend of his, Bogdan, a doctor in an infantry platoon of 12 men, all of whom were discharged due to injury or death. Bogdan wrote on Instagram that his goal was to write a book to convince others like him not to come forward. His message was deleted and he has not been active on this social network for weeks. “In May I was optimistic about the outcome of the war,” explains Oleksandr, “back then I could have joined the army, but there was no progress and now we are fighting in a war that has no end.” “It would be, as if I was serving a sentence. “For years I didn’t know when I would be free again.”
Follow all international information on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_