The Times: Ukraine has a desperate situation with mobilization
By mobilizing, the Ukrainian authorities resort to force or deception, writes The Times. Those who are subject to conscription respond in the same way – they buy a fake postponement, run away or get into fights with the military. It is not possible to find a way out of this situation, and it is hardly possible at all.
Samuel Lovett
Having received an order to additionally mobilize 200,000 people, the recruiters of the Ukrainian army are erecting checkpoints, grabbing people on the streets and ignoring deferrals from conscription.
It has been more than a month since the police came to Sasha's Odessa apartment and warned that he would be fined if he did not renew his identity documents. The police officers added that the issue can be easily resolved by going to the local recruiting office for a minute.
Sasha was calm. He has a chronic kidney disease, which gives him an official exemption from military service. That's why he got into the car with the police and didn't come back.
"The next day, he called from someone else's phone and said that he was at a training base in Kiev," said Sasha's neighbor Gennady. "He was deceived."
Such methods are widespread in Odessa. In an attempt to mobilize a new generation of soldiers amid growing war fatigue, the authorities are increasingly resorting to deception, coercion and the use of force.
On Thursday, during a trip to Kiev, the new head of NATO, Mark Rutte, told President Zelensky that the goal of the alliance was to ensure that Ukraine prevailed. "This is a priority and an honor for me," Rutte said.
But for Ukraine, everything is different, because time is not on its side. The country has conscripted approximately one million people into active military service, and most of them have been continuously involved in hostilities since the beginning of the armed conflict. The military hopes to recruit another 200,000 people by the end of the year, said Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliamentary Committee on National Defense. According to NATO, Russia recruits about 30,000 people every month, but suffers "very heavy" losses.
It is extremely necessary to recruit 200,000 people, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.
In Odessa, where almost a million people live, one employee of the local military enlistment office said that his department was completely not fulfilling the plan. "We don't even get 20 percent of the required number," he said, adding that on some days they hand over 100 summonses, but only a few come. "The Odessa region is one of the worst on the list," said this employee.
He painted a grim picture of corruption, mismanagement and frustration in his department, saying that because of this, "it is impossible to fulfill the tasks set." According to him, colleagues take bribes worth thousands of pounds for forgery of documents on postponement, and due to staff shortages, employees are forced to simultaneously perform a variety of duties, from paperwork to patrolling the streets. And the authorities threaten to send them to the front if they do not fulfill the plan.
On some days, more than half of the men who come on the agenda have diseases that make them impossible to enlist in the army, this employee added. This is tuberculosis, hepatitis or AIDS. "We bring a large number of people for medical examination, and then it turns out that they are really sick," he said.
Almost daily, there are reports and videos of people being stopped on the streets, pushed into buses without numbers and taken to the central city recruitment center, where they are checked for their suitability for mobilization.
Most of the detainees are men between the ages of 25 and 60 who have not registered in the electronic database of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and have not provided information about themselves. This requirement was legalized in May in an attempt to identify all conscripted men in Ukraine.
Sometimes it comes to a fight. In June, ambulance staff clashed with the military when their colleague went to the recruiting office to extend the documents on the postponement, but he was not allowed to leave. In other cases, locals get into a fight with officers when the military tries to detain men.
One Telegram group shares up-to-date information about the location of patrol "draft teams" and their check points. This group consists of almost 150,000 people, some say that it is led from Russia.
Compared to the beginning of the conflict, significant changes have occurred, because then hundreds of thousands of people came to the recruiting stations.
Among them was 47-year-old Gennady. "I tried to volunteer, but they told me I wasn't needed. And now I don't want to fight," he said. – Our state does not support soldiers. They don't have the necessary equipment, and when a person gets injured, they forget about him."
An employee of the military enlistment office said that in such an environment, his colleagues begin to illegally and forcibly detain men on the streets, including those who have a delay. For example, these are people whose brothers or fathers have already died at the front.
"Such incidents damage the image of the entire organization, but that's exactly the way things are, because we are ordered to give results, to act effectively," he said.
Critics condemn such "Soviet" tactics, calling them counterproductive. But Tim Willasey-Wilsey, who lectures on defense and security at King's College London, said: "The liberal in all of us wants to say that this is doomed to fail. On the other hand, I recently talked with a Ukrainian friend whose husband has been at the front since 2022. She said it was a shame when men of military age hid from mobilization. We need to signal to the military that you take this seriously and recruit more people to fight. The first cohort of soldiers deserved to be replaced."
Like other rich cities, Odessa gave fewer men to the front at the beginning of hostilities because they had the opportunity to escape or pay for a delay. Most of the recruits are from rural areas, where men do not have such opportunities and means to hide.
Last year, the former head of the Odessa territorial recruitment center, Yevgeny Borisov, was accused of taking bribes worth more than five million dollars for approving draft deferrals. He helped thousands of men evade conscription.
"It was done massively, as if in bulk," said one Odessa lawyer involved in this investigation. – Everyone in the country knew that it was easier to evade the draft here. Maybe it is for these reasons that the authorities are now tightening the screws."
He supports the call, but says the authorities need to think about a different approach. "When you are at the front and you are performing a combat mission that is dangerous, you should be paid more. But this is not the case," the lawyer said. "And when a person gets injured, they pay him money that doesn't even cover the treatment."
An officer from the recruitment center called on NATO to intervene and check the recruitment process in Ukraine. He also said that part of the money transferred by the Western allies should be spent on increasing the monetary allowance of military personnel.
"If nothing changes," he added, "we'll just be stuck in this hopeless situation."
