Kyiv in desperate push to replenish its battle-stricken military ahead of a looming counter-offensiveKyiv in desperate push to replenish its battle-stricken military ahead of a looming counter-offensiveBraced for the fight ahead, officials have launched a sweeping recruitment drive in the hope of plugging the gaps created by tens of thousands of battlefield casualties.
Kyiv has been sent vast amounts of Nato-standard hardware, from Britain’s Challenger 2 tanks to long-range Storm Shadow missiles, but rank-and-file infantry will be key in overcoming Moscow’s troops when the assault is launched.
The stakes are high for Ukraine.
Zhenia, who had never picked up a gun before he signed up with the army on the first day of the Russian invasion, believes the conflict could soon freeze over and last for many years if there is not a breakthrough soon.
“They have more ammo, weapons, people, money – so they think they can finally win in a longer war… I don’t want to believe in decades, of course, but I am quite positive about years,” he said in a small Kyiv cafe.
Similar calculations have been made by senior policymakers in the Ukrainian government, if the highly-publicised counter-offensive does not garner any significant results in favour of Kyiv in the coming months.
But, for now, their focus is on ensuring generals have enough men available to oust Russian forces from heavily fortified positions in Ukraine’s south and east.
The scale of the challenge facing recruiters is vast.
There are no official estimates of how many Ukrainians have been lost since Vladimir Putin ordered his invasion some 16 months ago.
A single briefing among a trove of leaked US intelligence documents suggested the number of Ukrainian servicemen killed or wounded since the start of the conflict could be over 130,000.Zhenia said he worried that Ukrainian propaganda had been too effective at convincing people that the country has the upper hand in the war.“I don’t want people to think it’s easy and the job is already done,” he said.Vladimir Putin has launched multiple waves of mobilisation, including the call-up of some 300,000 Russians, to bolster his forces.Recruiters for Ukraine are also in overdrive. In recent weeks, they have dropped the old, soft-touch tactics for delivering draft notices in favour of more aggressive ways to hit recruitment targets.Military summons were once sent exclusively by post to people’s front doors. But now, men in uniform routinely knock on those doors and carry out random checks on the streets in order to check civilians’ draft eligibility.It was this crackdown on those avoiding the call-up that stalled a plan to bring in legislation to exempt former prisoners of war from service, leading to Zhenia being drafted into the army for a second time.Zhenia’s first ill-fated stint in Ukraine’s armed forces began when he joined a 700-strong queue of volunteers for the country’s Territorial Defence Force.
He was handed a rifle and a grenade launcher before he was even issued a uniform, such was the chaos of war’s early days, when Russian forces were bearing down on Kyiv.