Men are being caught in the streets “like animals” by Kiev’s enlistment officers, Anatoly Kinakh has said
An increasing number of Ukrainian men are dodging the military draft because they do not believe they are defending a just state anymore, former Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh has said.
Ukrainian enlistment officers have adopted increasingly harsh recruitment methods amid military setbacks and mounting losses in the conflict with Russia. Numerous videos on social media have shown men being forcefully transported to enlistment centers, while there have also been reports of injuries and deaths among men who have resisted attempts to be sent to the front.
Kiev’s mobilization drive is facing “very serious problems,” Kinakh, who now heads the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (ULIE), acknowledged in an interview with the Superpozitsia YouTube on Thursday.
The former prime minister said he recently held discussions with representatives of Ukraine’s General Staff responsible for the psychological condition of troops, and “asked them a question: why in 2022 there were queues at military recruitment centers and today the enlistment officers are catching people in the streets like animals?”
“And we came to the same conclusion: some people have stopped believing and some doubt that they live in and protect a just state,” he said.
According to Kinakh, who headed the Ukrainian government between 2001 and 2002, “this problem is even more acute on the front line” with Russia.
Earlier this week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Aleksandr Syrsky, called for the ramping up of mobilization efforts, saying that the country needs to draft at least 30,000 troops every month to be able to sustain resistance to Moscow.
Kiev has recently launched a new voluntary military contract program targeting those aged 18–24, which offers young men not subject to mobilization one-year contracts with a 1 million hryvnia ($24,000) payout – four times the standard rate – plus monthly combat bonuses starting at 120,000 hryvnia ($2,880), along with other benefits.
Unlike Ukraine, which declared a general mobilization and barred most men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country, Russia has avoided a full nationwide draft during the conflict. Following a partial mobilization in the fall of 2022, Moscow has largely relied on contract soldiers to fill the ranks of its military. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in December that in 2024 more than 1,000 volunteers were joining the country’s armed forces every day.
