Ukraine launches military charm offensive as conscription flags

Reuters:

DNIPRO, Ukraine, April 23- Far from the trenches, at orderly new centres across Ukraine, civilian recruiters armed with laptops and info packs offer patriotic volunteers opportunities to join the war.

As Ukraine’s efforts to conscript enough men to fight Russia are stymied by public scepticism, defence officials and military units are embarking on a multi-pronged charm offensive to recruit a citizens’ army to resist the invasion.

This softer call-up is being conducted on job-search sites and outreach centres, as well as billboards and social media, and offers a wartime novelty: an element of choice.

Candidates can select their precise unit and roles suiting their skills, for instance, as well as how long they will serve.

On city streets, billboards of Ukrainian soldiers implore citizens to join up and defend their homeland, offering QR codes for convenience. Online, the 93rd Mechanised Brigade assures countrymen that “Everyone can do it!” in a glossy video campaign showing civilians, such as a chef and tractor driver, switching to analogous army roles as battlefield cook and tank driver.

Natalia Kalmykova, a deputy defence minister, said military planners recognised that in a democratic country, giving people some choice could be key in attracting them to the military.

“The people who come to defend our country now are not those who chose the military as their career: it’s civilians,” she said during an interview in Kyiv. “And civilians are used to being able to choose.”

Kyiv is desperate to replenish its drained and depleted forces, which are vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Russia along a 1,000-km front as the war enters a third grinding year.