"KHARKIV, Ukraine — At a subway station, a recruiting officer
named Oleksandr, one of dozens deployed to different spots around Kharkiv,
pulled young men out of the crowd recently, checking documents and determining
whether they were eligible for military service.
A nationwide campaign is underway in Ukraine to recruit,
register and draft men — a predictable response for a country at war. That
campaign includes fanning out on the streets to find potential soldiers and
issuing summonses ordering them to report to recruiting offices.
But the effort, especially the street recruiting, is drawing
accusations that it is secretive and arbitrary, that it violates the government’s
own rules and that it sometimes drafts the unwilling while spurning the
willing. It has also led to a cat-and-mouse game between recruiters and men
trying to avoid them.
Recruiters like Oleksandr, who did not give his full name
because he was not authorized to speak to the media, say they issue summonses
to register only to those who want to fight. “We ask them, do they have
military training and do they want to serve in the war?” he said.
But some of those on the receiving end say they were never
given a choice about appearing, while there are reports of men who are eager to
fight being turned away, for reasons that appear bureaucratic in nature.
A petition signed by more than 25,000 Ukrainians, the
threshold for requiring President Volodymyr Zelensky to respond, requests a ban
on issuing summonses at checkpoints, gas stations and other public places. It
asks him to establish a transparent process for when people might be called up.
“There are many willing people who are motivated, who have
combat experience, but cannot join the service, because in many places they
recruited people precisely on the streets who do not have experience,” the
petition read.
Denis, 29, said he was recently handed a summons he did not
want outside a Kharkiv supermarket. But at the recruitment office, “I lied and
said I didn’t have any military training,” he recalled — a lie that may not be
caught because his records are in a different part of Ukraine. Denis, who did
not want his last name to be published for fear of punishment, added, “I know
guys who don’t even leave their apartments because they’re afraid to get a
summons, but I also know a lot of people who want to fight.”
Ukraine has long had conscription, and young men are
required to do military service unless they fall into an exempt category, like
being enrolled in a university, having a disability or having at least three
children. After the war began, all nonexempt men ages 18 to 60 were required to
register with their local recruitment offices and undergo medical screening for
possible service, but at times enforcement and record-keeping have been
haphazard.
Government officials say that only those with military
experience or specifically needed skills have been drafted so far, but that
others are likely to be called up as the war continues. Critics say that
conscription has not been as selective as officials make it out to be, and that
with the military in charge of recruitment, registration and drafting, the
process is shrouded in secrecy, with little transparency about the standards
applied to each step.
“This process of handing out summonses fully complies with
the law,” said Yevheniia Riabeka, former legal adviser to the commander in
chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “This is a normal attempt to register
citizens who are obligated to defend their country.”
Each local recruitment center is given targets for numbers
of people to register, she said — but those figures are “completely secret
information.”
Andrii Novak, a lawyer who represents people trying to be
excused from service, drew a distinction between a summons sent by a
recruitment office because its records showed that a person should register and
one filled out by a recruiter who stopped someone on the street. He said his
firm, Miller Law Firm, considers the latter illegal.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city by population, a
channel on the messaging app Telegram provides anonymous, crowdsourced,
real-time information on the locations of recruiters for people trying to steer
clear of them. It has more than 67,000 subscribers.
“Our goal is to prevent the inappropriate issuance of
summonses,” reads the channel description. It invites residents to send in
locations and photos of police officers and recruiters.
One post featured a picture, taken from inside a parked car,
of recruiters in front of a shop. The caption read, “It's our old friends.”
Another Telegram channel for the Lviv region in Western
Ukraine reads: “It is important to get all the relevant information. Only by
knowing your rights, you can protect yourself and your family!” The channel
lists the five places where the most summonses are handed out and the diseases
that keep men from serving. It also explains how to refuse a summons.
Ukrainians have shown remarkable solidarity, with hundreds
of thousands volunteering for the regular army, for the Territorial Defense
Forces — akin to the National Guard, with some units deployed in combat — or to
work in civilian defense activities. But the numbers have not been enough to
match the Russians’ battlefield strength — or to keep up with casualties, which
officials have said peaked this spring at 100 killed and almost 400 wounded
daily.
There are also signs, five grueling months into the war,
that the sense of unity is fraying at the edges. Soldiers, including minimally
prepared raw recruits, have done long, hard service, while others have managed
to stay far from it.
Volodymyr Marchenko, 48, a farmer, has served five months in
a Territorial Defense battalion, often at or near the front lines, without his
unit being relieved. He knew how to shoot a hunting rifle and enlisted
immediately when the invasion began.
Sent to fight in street clothes and ordinary shoes, he
sustained frostbite on his toes.
“There is no one to replace us,” he said. “There are too few
people. It’s very hard for the guys psychologically.”
There is also disillusionment with a system that turns away
some who want to fight, while taking in others who are unwilling and
unqualified.
“There are a lot of guys who have a lot of motivation and
ability, who want to join the army now, but they don’t take them,” said a
senior soldier in a Territorial Defense unit, who requested anonymity to speak
candidly.
The lack of public transparency about the recruitment
system, a major complaint of its critics, makes it difficult to tell how and
why people are recruited. For the most part, though, bureaucratic or logistical
factors — such as some units’ lacking available slots for officers or soldiers
— seem to be behind why some with relevant skills or experience are not
accepted for service.
On the opposite side, some commanders and senior soldiers
say summoning men unwilling to serve is lowering morale among those who
volunteered.
Last month, the Kyiv police chief, Ivan Vyhivskyi, said that
police and military commissars raided two nightclubs that were violating curfew
and issued 219 summonses for military registration to men they found there.
That drew a sharp response from a senior sergeant of the
47th Armed Forces Battalion in a Facebook post this month.
“I am proud of my military service and I am outraged that my
profession is being reduced to the level of punishment for these scumbags,”
wrote the sergeant, Valeriy Markus. “It’s humiliating.”
He wrote that soldiers and officers who put their lives on
the line were demoralized by a chaotic recruitment process that drew draftees
with poor qualifications or little inclination to serve. Sergeant Markus said
he had personally faced situations where draftees’ alcoholism or other problems
endangered other soldiers’ lives.
“It is impossible to get rid of them, or use force — they
will sue,” he wrote.
Sergeant Markus, identified in a Ukrainian defense industry
posting as part of the leadership of the 47th Battalion, declined to be
interviewed.
In Kharkiv, only 25 miles from the Russian border,
Oleksandr, the recruitment officer, said he was looking for unregistered men
with military training. If they say they are not interested, he lets them go,
he said.
Some, he recalled, shouted at him. “They say: ‘I don’t want
to serve! Ukraine isn’t even a real country!’”
Oleksandr said that after the Kharkiv recruitment office was
leveled by Russian airstrikes early in the war, military recruiters there no
longer had records of who had registered and needed to recreate their database.
Mr. Zelensky has said he wants to field one million men in
the military effort. That figure is reported to be at about 700,000, including
Territorial Defense fighters, some of whom have been deployed to combat.
Millions of Ukrainians, displaced from the war-torn eastern
and southern regions, are living in Western Ukraine, close to the Polish
border, including many military-age men who have not signed up.
Last month the military chief of staff caused an uproar by
issuing instructions indicating that military-age men needed to register when
moving between provinces. After criticism from Mr. Zelensky that the military
could not make such a move unilaterally, it clarified that it was simply asking
citizens to inform the authorities if they were moving to a different region.
“Dear citizens,” read the notice. “I remind you. Your
country needs you!””
Country, that isn’t even a real country?
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