During a break from fighting the Russians, an avuncular rifleman recalled how he was going for a haircut one day when he was press-ganged into joining the Ukrainian army, WSJ reported.
Three recruitment officials accosted the stocky, gray-haired 47-year-old outside the barber shop in his small hometown, ordered him to get in a car and detained him for two days in a dark room at the local draft center until he had signed up.
“I got my haircut at the training camp,” he said.
Now known by his military call sign Dubok, the former electrical engineer offered to serve as a technician in the rear. “But to get that job, you have to pay bribes,” he said. Instead, he was sent to join an infantry unit depleted by months of hard fighting. His battalion of the 47th Mechanized Brigade is defending the city of Avdiivka against waves of Russian assaults, the biggest current battle in Russia’s relentless war on Ukraine.
“Physically, I can’t handle this,” Dubok said of front-line combat. “I’m deeply disappointed that I’m no longer 20.”
Ukraine needs to rebuild its battered army. The infantry, which bears the brunt of deaths and injuries, is chronically short of men after nearly two years of resisting Russia’s full-blown invasion.
The most highly motivated fighters volunteered early. Those who haven’t been killed or wounded often say they are exhausted. Ukraine now relies on the draft—and sometimes on rounding up men—to replenish the ranks. Meanwhile, Russia can draw on a much larger population to replace its own heavy losses.
But a rickety draft system isn’t mobilizing Ukraine’s manpower effectively, providing the quantity and quality of troops needed, or sharing the burden fairly across Ukrainian society, say many soldiers and military analysts.
A combination of corruption, exemptions and political caution has protected much of Ukraine’s urban middle class against having to fight in the cold and muddy trenches. On the long front line, a disproportionate share of draftees are middle-aged men like Dubok. Often they are from villages and small towns and were too poor to buy their way out.
Veteran soldiers who have been fighting since 2022—some since 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine’s east—express frustration that new recruits are often past their physical prime.
“The quality of the replacements is not good. They’re rural guys aged 43 to 50, sometimes with health problems,” said an experienced infantryman fighting near Avdiivka.
Tired fighters note bitterly that when they go on leave in big cities such as Kyiv or Dnipro, they see able-bodied men in their 20s and 30s frequenting gyms, bars and hip restaurants.
“We don’t have full-on mobilization” of society, said a drone operator with the Ukrainian Navy’s special forces, known by his call sign Dobro. “But it’s a necessity. We can’t do without it.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that the military was asking him for up to 500,000 more troops. He said no decision has been taken, calling the issue “very sensitive.” He noted that many soldiers who have been fighting a long time will also need to be demobilized at some point.
Dubok, the 47-year-old, didn’t protest or resist when he was detained at the draft center. “I went to school with the guys who processed me. I didn’t want to create problems for them,” he said. He had been thinking about joining the military anyway. “But not this way,” he said.
The day Dubok was drafted, his wife was left waiting for him at home with strawberries and cream. Now he watches rats feasting on dead bodies in the muddy battlefield around Avdiivka. “I’ve never seen such big rats in my life,” he said.
Stories of men being confronted in the street and detained by draft officials abound in Ukraine. Some incidents have been filmed and put on the internet. “It’s unlawful. They can only hand out draft notices, not detain people,” said Serhiy Parokhnenko, a lawyer from Dnipro whose clients include men challenging their call-up.
A Defense Ministry official admitted violations by some local recruitment staff but said too many citizens are ignoring their army summons.
Finding willing recruits for the infantry is proving especially difficult in the current phase of attritional warfare. The West’s fading support for Ukraine is darkening the country’s mood, and making front-line combat even more daunting.
Growing Republican opposition in Congress has held up U.S. military and financial aid. European Union aid is being impeded by Hungary, whose leader Viktor Orban has long had warm relations with Moscow.
Western deliveries of arms and ammunition have slowed sharply. Russia has regained a clear advantage in artillery firepower, where Ukraine had parity earlier this year.
About 800,000 people serve in Ukraine’s armed forces, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said recently. Casualties in the war are a tightly held secret, but full hospitals and graveyards around Ukraine show the high price the country is paying to defy Russia’s attempted conquest.
On paper, Ukraine still has a large reserve of potential manpower, with several million male residents in their 20s and 30s who have yet to fight. The military hasn’t drafted men under the age of 27 so far, although Parliament has authorized a lower age limit of 25. Groups exempt from the draft include fathers of several children, carers for disabled people and workers in key sectors.
