Facing conscription, Ukraine’s young are torn between fight or flight
Plans to mobilise half a million more troops leave nowhere to hide for those who would rather cling to a semblance of ‘normal’ life — nowhere except the nightclub.
The front line is 300 miles away, yet for the nervous young men of Podil, a Kyiv neighbourhood known for its nightclubs and coffee shop culture, the war suddenly seems much closer.
“I’m frightened,” said Dima, 31, chain-smoking his way through a friend’s pack of tobacco. “My girlfriend says it’s up to me. But I don’t want to go.”
At the end of last year, President Zelensky announced plans to conscript 500,000 soldiers. Following his speech in late December, the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, began debating laws to widen the draft. Last week Zelensky finally enacted legislation that will reduce the minimum age of conscription from 27 to 25 and scrap the medical exemption that deemed some men “partially eligible”.
Short of munitions and short of men, Ukraine’s generals say there is no alternative to mass mobilisation to stop the Russian advance. They have ordered the construction of ditches, trenches and anti-tank “dragon’s teeth” behind the front lines in anticipation of further retreats.
On the battlefield, Ukraine is outgunned seven to one as a result of the United States stalling over a dollars 60 billion aid package. Zelensky has warned allies to expect more territorial concessions and urged Ukrainian men who have fled abroad to return home to serve their country.
In the bright spring sunshine of Kyiv, however, questions about Zelensky’s mobilisation elicited monosyllabic responses.
Two years since Russian troops withdrew from the gates of Kyiv, an uneasy sense of normality has returned to the Ukrainian capital, albeit punctuated by devastating missile strikes. In grungy Podil, the techno nightclubs have reopened.
Clutching his coffee tightly, Dima, a video producer who refused to give his real name, said he was taking precautions to dodge the draft. He only travels between Ukraine’s cities at night, to avoid enlistment officers, and has saved thousands of euros to pay a bribe.
“I don’t want to serve,” he said, his eyes shifting behind thick glasses. “I don’t know what else to say.”
Brutal calculation
A year ago, it was Russia that appeared to be running out of men willing to fight. The mercenary Wagner Group offered murderers and rapists their freedom in exchange for serving on the front line. President Putin was forced publicly to announce plans to recruit hundreds of thousands of men in a move that appeared fraught with political risk.
Yet fresh from another sham election victory and buoyed by the death of his political rival, Alexei Navalny, Putin has found a plentiful source of manpower by tempting uneducated youngsters from impoverished regions thousands of miles from Moscow with the offer of well-paid jobs in the military.
Russia invaded Ukraine with 360,000 troops in 2022. That number has now swelled to 470,000, even accounting for an estimated 315,000 casualties. The annual spring conscription drive will recruit another 150,000 Russians.
Western partners dithering over the supply of further weapons are confronted by a brutal calculation: the population of unoccupied Ukraine is estimated to be about 31 million, compared with 144 million in Russia. The longer the war continues, the greater the fear that sheer numbers will win out.
Ukraine, a country suffering from the lowest fertility rate in the world, has attempted so far to spare its youth the horrors of war. But with the average age of a Ukrainian soldier now 43, the impulse to protect the country’s future is losing ground to the urgent needs of the present.
As debate rages over who should fight, Ukrainian MPs have submitted more than 4,000 amendments to laws working their way through the parliament that would limit a soldier’s service to three years. One change would even adopt the Wagner Group’s tactics by conscripting Ukrainian prisoners.
Paranoia online
For young people in Kyiv terrified by the prospect of joining the army, tools are available to help them escape the war.
In the Ukrainian capital, hundreds of thousands scan Telegram channels for advice about how to dodge the draft agents. Directly helping people to avoid a call-up is against the law, so the messages are coded.
“One man just got a lot of snow dumped on him outside Politekhnicheskyi Institut metro station,” one read recently. “Very cloudy outside Festivalnyy shopping centre right now,” said another. The mobilisation drive has been ramping up - at least according to those unlucky enough to be caught.
Anton Frolov, a 40-year-old film critic, was walking a friend’s dog early in the morning in Lviv when he was pulled over by soldiers demanding to see his papers.
He was taken straight to a medical centre to determine whether he was fit to fight. Tests showed he had elevated blood pressure, but these concerns were dismissed. “I was told that I had cheated the test to deliberately raise it,” he said.
By 3pm, he was being driven to a military base outside Lviv. He is now training with the 710 Regiment, defending the country’s bridges, railway lines and roads - and potentially being sent to construct the rearguard defensive lines in Donbas.
“I’m afraid, but the guys who have returned and described working there have calmed me down,” he said, speaking from his base. “I was going to get drafted one way or another, but I didn’t imagine it would be like this.”
Where are the young men?
By mid-morning in Kyiv, small queues form outside the enlistment offices, hidden in the drab courtyards of the nine-storey Soviet-era apartments that dominate the city’s suburbs.
Gaggles of 16-year-olds register their details for the first time, something they will have to do until they are 60, even if they do not have to serve for more than a decade. But across three draft centres in different parts of Kyiv visited by the Sunday Times, men in their twenties and thirties are a rare sight.
“All those who were willing to volunteer have already signed up,” says Andriy Bessarabchyk, 52, limping out of a drafting centre on the left bank of the River Dnieper. A special forces officer in the 1990s, Bessarabchyk enlisted in the first days after Russia’s invasion and served as a commander in the National Guard. The strain of moving anti-tank weapons and body armour injured his hip, putting an end to his fighting days.
Now his 32-year-old son may have to take his place. “If the fighting gets any harder at the front line, I will drive him there myself. Sooner or later, he will have to fight,” says Bessarabchyk.
Clubbing to forget
Before the war, Kyiv ranked among the most distinctive clubbing destinations in the world. On a recent Saturday, DJs from Germany, France and the US performed at Closer nightclub, which opened at 3pm and closed at 10.30pm to meet curfew.
Inside, clubber Boris Khmilevsky, 28, described his work as a combat medic in the frontline town of Kreminna. “People have gotten used to the idea of the front line being distant, that it’s fixed,” he said. “But the truth is that the Russians could break through at any moment. We could be fighting for Kyiv again. People don’t understand the threat.”
Handing out condoms nearby for an LGBT charity, Vladislav Fomin, 27, said draft officers had stopped him in central Kyiv a few weeks ago.
At that point he was still too young to fight, but he acknowledged that his time may soon come."My mum is urging me to leave the country. But what would I do abroad? If I get called up, I will serve,” he said. “I’m frightened, but Russia frightens me more.”
The Times
