Ukraine's central challenge is manpower, warn analysts

Recruitment numbers remain shrouded in wartime secrecy

- DAN PELESCHUK

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 around 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.

The combat veteran is on the front lines of the effort to redouble the draft despite waning public enthusiasm for wartime service as military analysts describe regenerating troop manpower as one of Kyiv’s central battlefield challenges.

President Volodymyr Zelensky 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.