A failing recruitment drive Fewer than 500 volunteers have enlisted with Ukraine’s military under a new program meant to recruit men too young for the draft
In February 2025, the Ukrainian authorities launched a campaign to recruit volunteers for contract military service. Ukrainians between the ages of 18 and 24 can enlist for a single year in exchange for a one-time payment of 1 million hryvnias (about $24,000), an interest-free housing loan, and a monthly salary of up to 120,000 hryvnias (about $2,900) — 5.5 times more than the average pay in Ukraine. Volunteers would also be exempt from Ukraine’s draft for one year after completing their service contracts. When Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced the launch of the new campaign, he said Ukraine is “creating a new army staffing system that meets the challenges of our time.” Two months later, however, fewer than 500 people have signed contracts with the Ukrainian military under the new program. Meduza reviews the recruitment campaign’s disappointing results, focusing on a recent investigation by Reuters.
“I wish the number were higher,” Pavlo Palisa, a senior official in President Zelensky’s administration, lamented in an interview on April 12, 2025. He added that roughly 1,500 volunteers are currently in the process of signing contracts with the military under the new campaign, but many applicants have not yet reached this stage. “We’re studying and definitely looking into the reasons why someone may have verbally agreed but didn’t go through with signing,” Palisa said, noting that parents often influence a young person’s decision to enlist with the armed forces. “There are various reasons, and we’re analyzing these issues to draw conclusions and, where necessary, make adjustments,” he explained.
Reuters journalists spoke with young Ukrainians who signed one-year contracts and were undergoing training before heading to the front. Pavlo Broshkov, 20, said he decided to enlist because he sees military service as his duty and wants to help protect his six-month-old daughter Polina from the horrors he himself experienced growing up during the conflict. “I don’t want my child to even hear the word ‘war’ in the future. I simply don’t want her to know what it means,” he said.
Broshkov also admitted that financial incentives played a significant role in his enlistment; as a young father, he wants to provide a home for his family.
While her husband serves under contract, 18-year-old Kristina Broshkova has moved back in with her parents. She says she understands the need to defend the country, but she can’t stop worrying about the danger Pavlo faces. “My husband is running from death now, and it could catch up to him at any moment,” Kristina said. “Money is a motivation, but dying for money isn’t really worth it.”
Serhii Filimonov, commander of the Da Vinci Wolves battalion serving on the eastern Pokrovsk front, told Reuters that the financial rewards offered to young people under contract aren’t enough to fight a war: “You have to fight for your friends, for your family, for the future, not for a million hryvnias.” Filimonov reasoned that the young people who were truly motivated to fight had already enlisted before the military rolled out its new recruitment program.
Oleksandr Moroz, a military instructor at one of the 10 brigades now signing up volunteers for one-year contracts, admitted to Reuters that most of the new recruits enlist primarily because of the financial incentives. “At this stage, they are still children, big children,” he said, describing the results of the campaign as “a drop in the ocean” in Ukraine’s broader effort to lower the average age of its front-line soldiers. Today, the average age of Ukrainian soldiers in combat is 45, a senior diplomat source with knowledge of the country's defense capabilities told Reuters.
Of course, volunteers signing Ukraine’s one-year contracts list reasons beyond the financial perks. Soldiers now in training who spoke to Reuters talked about wanting to defend their homeland, some said it’s better to volunteer than be drafted, and others described ambitions to build a career in the military.
However, the recruits interviewed by Reuters admitted that they weren’t fully prepared for what awaited them in uniform. “It’s like TikTok and real life: there is a big difference. In the video, it looks so cool, so easy, but in reality, it’s not,” said Zakhariy Shatko, 24, who enlisted alongside his friend, Broshkov.
Analysis by Meduza columnist Dmitry Kuznets
On a recent episode of Meduza’s daily podcast, Kuznets concluded that the Ukrainian army’s campaign to enlist young volunteers has failed if the figures Pavlo Palisa provided to Reuters are accurate.
Even if Ukraine suddenly lowered its draft age and began mobilizing young men by force (as former U.S. President Joe Biden urged), it still wouldn’t solve the military's problems. The key reason is that men between 18 and 25 comprise Ukraine’s smallest age demographic, and a large portion of these people are students who are eligible for draft deferments. Additionally, external pressure on Kyiv to draft young people has likely diminished since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and domestic politics make it unlikely that Volodymyr Zelensky would resort to mobilizing Ukraine’s youngest adult men by force.
