At a rural penal colony in southeast Ukraine, several convicts stand assembled under barbed wire to hear an army recruiter offer them a shot at parole. In return, they must join the gruelling fight against Russia.
“You can put an end to this and start a new life,” said the recruiter, a member of a volunteer assault battalion. “The main thing is your will, because you are going to defend the motherland. You won’t succeed at 50 per cent, you have to give 100 per cent of yourself, even 150 per cent.”
Ukraine is expanding the draft to cope with acute battlefield shortages more than two years into fighting against Russia’s full-scale invasion. And its recruiting efforts have turned, for the first time, to the country’s prison population.
Although Ukraine does not announce any details of troop deployment numbers or casualties, frontline commanders openly acknowledge that they are facing serious manpower problems as Russia continues to build up forces in eastern Ukraine and make incremental gains westward.
More than 3,000 prisoners already have been released on parole and assigned to military units after such recruitment was approved by parliament in a controversial mobilisation bill last month, Ukrainian Deputy Justice Minister Olena Vysotska told The Associated Press.
About 27,000 inmates could potentially be eligible for the new program, according to Justice Ministry estimates.
“A lot of the motivation comes from (inmates) wanting to return home a hero, and not to return home from prison,” Vysotska said.
Ernest Volvach, 27, wants to take up the offer. He’s serving a two-year sentence for robbery, at the penal colony in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region. He works in the kitchen, ladling dollops of food into tin bowls.
“It’s stupid to sit here doing nothing,” Volvach said, adding that since the start of the war he’s wanted to “do something for Ukraine” and have the opportunity to enlist. “Now it’s appeared.”
Ukrainian soldiers on active duty are