There are different reactions to be observed to the Ukrainian government’s effort at drafting additional man power for the forces. 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 mobilisation 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.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy lowered the draft age to 25 from 27 in April and signed off on an overhaul of the mobilisation process that entered force in May, obliging men under 60 to renew their personal data at draft offices or online.
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 defence committee estimated that the military could enlist that many by the year’s end if the process continued at its current pace.
Since the mobilisation 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. “Sometimes processing drags on to 1 o’clock at night.”
Team BharatShakti
(With Inputs from Reuters)
