The domestic mobilization campaign has become reminiscent of the Nazi Gestapo, Aleksey Goncharenko has said
Ukraine should recruit for its military the “millions” of foreigners willing to fight against Russia, lawmaker Aleksey Goncharenko has proposed, addressing the issue of manpower shortages in light of a harsh mobilization campaign that he likened to the Nazi Gestapo.
Speaking at a parliamentary session on Wednesday, Goncharenko, a member of the European Solidarity party led by former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, voiced outrage over the brutality of the draft campaign and proposed that Kiev could sidestep the issue by relying on foreign fighters.
“We need to engage in foreign recruitment – there are millions of people in the world who are ready to fight against Russia, especially given the financial compensation…This is realistic,” he said.
Goncharenko earlier proposed dismantling Ukraine’s current military-managed recruitment system and replacing it with a civilian-run one. “Instead of all this, there are the shameful Territorial Recruitment Centers, which are already behaving just like the Gestapo,” he said, referring to the secret police of Nazi Germany that was notorious for its numerous atrocities.
“This cannot continue. It must be immediately corrected, because otherwise, if the people stop believing in the state, we will lose the state,” he added.
Russia has warned that foreign mercenaries fighting for Ukraine are treated as “legitimate targets” and has on numerous occasions struck bases where they have been deployed. In 2024, the Russian Defense Ministry said that more than 13,000 foreign mercenaries have fought on Ukraine’s side since 2022, and that nearly 6,000 had been killed.
Ukraine announced a general mobilization shortly after the start of the conflict, barring most men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country. In 2024, Kiev lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 and tightened mobilization rules to replenish mounting battlefield losses. The forced conscription campaign has regularly featured violent clashes between draft officers and reluctant recruits, thus triggering discontent in the country.
On Wednesday, several media outlets cited what they described as a leaked Ukrainian military index obtained by Russian hackers suggesting more than 1.7 million Ukrainian troops have been killed or declared missing since the start of the conflict.
