Ukrainians who volunteered to defend the homeland are exhausted, wounded or killed. And many of those who should replace them, after 21 months of war, prefer not to. Ukrainian society is at a defining moment, that of the second great wave of recruitment to stop the Russian invader. The Ukrainian Armed Forces and civil authorities have intensified actions to call up, even under threat of prison, men between 27 and 60 years old. The Government has a double challenge ahead of it: confronting the invader with new troops and facing the lack of motivation of a large part of the population that does not want to go to war.
Kiril Babii is a Ukrainian artillery officer serving in Bakhmut, on one of the bloodiest fronts of the war. He is from Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Since then he had resided 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 to enlist. Like him, there have been almost half a million men – and 62,000 women – who have done it, especially during the past year. On November 20, Babii published a text on Instagram that had a great impact in the internal Ukrainian debate: he announced that in February 2024, when the war will be two years old, he will leave the army. Babii assumes that he will go to prison for desertion, but considers the recruitment system unfair.
“A month ago I asked myself a question: what if the war lasts five years, Kiril? And I started to cry. It’s two in the morning. I don’t want to be here three more years, because of the war. I am 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 thinking about war.” Babii’s text hits home on what many of his comrades think: “It is wrong that those of us who mobilized voluntarily and defended our country have such poor expectations.” [de futuro]. In fact, for that there is a reserve of mobilized people.” This officer concluded: “That is why I write this, so that there are changes, changes that transform the Army from a prison to a well-organized institution for the defense of the country in a long-term war.”
The Babii protest is not a unique case and the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, confirmed in his video message last Friday that his Government will implement a new system of mobilization, but also of demobilization of the troops who have been fighting for almost two months. .
The special envoy of EL PAÍS has visited several cities in the west and east of Ukraine in the last month; from Lviv to Kherson, from Mikolaiv to Dnipro; from kyiv to Zaporizhzhia. In all of them, the interviews with a dozen young people from different social conditions have ended with the same conclusion: they do not want to go to war. In Lviv, the city in the country where Ukrainian nationalism is strongest, Stanislav, a hotel receptionist, laments that so many people from eastern Ukraine continue to speak Russian. Asked if he is ready to enlist, he rejects it: “Why so many deaths? To advance 20 kilometers? This makes no sense”.
Stanislav was referring to the minimal progress that the Army has made in the great counteroffensive that began last June on the Zaporizhia 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 human losses, but US military sources assured last August The New York Times that the wounded soldiers since the beginning of the invasion could be 120,000 and the dead, 70,000. There is no data on possible casualties in the last three months.
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The majority in Ukraine continues to support the war effort to stop the Russian invasion. This is indicated by surveys, such as the one by the American Gallup population center last October, which indicated that 60% of Ukrainians “are committed to continuing fighting until they win the war.” By winning the war, 91% of them mean expelling Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory, according to Gallup. In the same study published by Gallup in October 2022, the majority in favor of continuing the war was 70%.
The Ukrainian General Staff keeps secret the number of people it is incorporating into the army and the replacements it needs, but military sources on the Zaporizhia front estimated to this newspaper last October that 200,000 new soldiers are required.
The hotel where Stanislav works is located on Svoboda Avenue in the center of Lviv. On weekends, before curfew [a medianoche], the bars and beverage stores in the area are full of young people stocking up to have a party. Stanislav witnessed in November how a military patrol from a recruiting office forcibly took away a group of young people in a van. In the last two months, videos of situations of this type have increased. These videos, recorded with the mobile phone of some accidental observer, have flown around social networks, but now they frequently appear 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 it. Recruitment offices can send summonses by mail, deliver them in person on public roads or by visiting homes. Each person is free to sign the acknowledgment of receipt at that time. If a person repeatedly refuses to appear at the recruitment office – whether to register, to declare his personal situation and the reasons why he should not be called up, to pass medical examinations or to join the army -, A legal case is opened against her, which can end in a fine or sentences of two to five years in prison.
Since this fall, military patrols have been intensified to recruit on public roads. Oleksii Danilov, secretary of the National Security Council, confirmed to the newspaper on November 27 Guardian that a new recruitment program will be announced. This plan includes the hiring of two large human resources companies that will identify citizens who can be enlisted more precisely, according to their studies or profession. Danilov assured that this would give new recruits more confidence that they will perform functions in line with their training.
End of “kind mobilization”
The newspaper Pravda published a report on November 1 in which it indicated that the time of “kind mobilization” must end. This Ukrainian media interviewed a military chaplain, Andrii Zelinskii, who repudiated the dichotomy between the almost normal life seen in cities far from the front like Kiev and the combat zones: “In Ukraine today there is an alternative reality, an alternative to pain , to wounds, to death, to war. And this is the main threat to resist the enemy.”
But not everything is fun in the Ukrainian capital, there is also anxiety. Rostislav is 28 years old and since last September he always goes out with boots, a jacket and a military backpack. He is not a soldier, but he believes that this way he will not be approached on the street by the soldiers from the recruiting commissariat. Irina is 30 years old and is an accountant in a company. She is looking for a partner through the dating app Tinder; A man she struck up conversation with in October lives in the eastern suburbs of kyiv. She asked to meet at a coffee shop in the city center, but he rejected it and admitted that she didn’t leave her neighborhood because she doesn’t want to take public transportation and be stopped by a recruiting patrol. The media warned Telegraph in an article from November 27, that many men limit their trips abroad to avoid being mobilized.
A paradigmatic example of what goes through the minds of many Ukrainians is Oleksandr, the false name of a 27-year-old man from Zaporizhzhia who prefers to remain anonymous. The war front is located 25 kilometers from the city. Oleksandr suffers from depression because, without having a permanent job, he knows that sooner or later he may be called up. Salaries in the Army are high, compared to the Ukrainian average, ranging from 750 to 2,500 euros per month, depending on risk and responsibilities. But among his friends there are soldiers, and everyone suggests that he do everything possible to avoid it: “I have two great friends; One was assigned to a special forces unit and two months ago he was demobilized because her mother is sick and he must take care of her. The first thing he told me is that the army is chaos and that he does not plan to return. This fall, my other friend paid $5,500 to a guide who walked him through forests for two hours to the Slovak border. He is now out of the country, he did not want to go to war.” Men of legal age and up to 65 years of age cannot leave the country, according to martial law.
Oleksandr’s cousin is on the wanted list for failing to register with the local military office, a mandatory procedure for all adult men up to retirement age. The army showed up the last week of November at his mother’s house to deliver another request; His son is hiding in kyiv. The message that has affected him the most was shared on Instagram by a good friend of his, Bogdan, a doctor in an infantry platoon of 12 men, all of whom have been 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 enlist. His message was deleted and he has not been active on this social network for weeks. “I was optimistic in May about the outcome of the war,” explains Oleksandr, “at that time I could have gone to the army, but there has been no progress and now it is going to fight in a war that has no end, it would be like serving a sentence.” for years, not knowing when I will be free again.”
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