Grumpy Rant: Is Ukraine doing ‘a Prigozhin’?

Ukraine needs to sort out its draft and conscription policy – and recruit more soldiers to help the exhausted and outnumbered warriors holding down the war front.

(Michael Andersen and Brian Bonner write)

As long-term friends of Ukraine, we are worried that the generally PR-savvy Ukrainian president seems to be losing his Midas touch. Now is not a good time for that, Volodymyr Zelensky. Headlines like the one above from Politico are not helpful.

It was not the only damaging one. On May 10, The Kyiv Independent headline: “Ukraine could recruit up to 20,000 convicts into the army, justice minister says.” Reading the words “convicts” and “army,” anybody familiar with this war immediately thinks of Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Prigozhin was the head of the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary unit known for its extreme brutality. In 2023, Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, agreed with the Russian leader that 50,000 prison inmates would be freed to join the group to go fight in Ukraine - including many murderers and rapists.

Yevgeny Prigozhin in a cemetery for fallen Wagner recruits (The Guardian/Reuters)

The central tenet of the Wagner modus operandi is that the prison inmates recruited often are men with a terrible, brutal past and with little future, imprisoned on decades-long or life sentences in abject conditions. One in three Wagner recruits was in prison for murder. Prigozhin himself, in full warlord combat gear, would often personally run recruiting meetings in the prisons where he would promise hardened criminals handsome pay and their freedom if they survived six months in Ukraine and that their families would be taken good care of in case they were killed there. And many of them have died, maybe as many as 20 percent - in what has become known as “Putin’s meat grinder.” They played an important role in the Russian advances around Bakhmut last autumn and winter. Prigozhin would eventually get too big for his boots, rebel against Putin, and, unsurprisingly, get blown up in a plane crash on Aug. 23, 2023. Prigozhin and the viciousness of his troops attracted much attention in Western media. He several times applauded when his soldiers published videos of how they tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war or killed traitors with sledgehammers while laughing and filming.

(headline from ABC, 23 August 2023)

But what Ukraine is planning to do is different, Justice Minister Denys Miliuska is taking pains to get across. “Prisoners serving sentences due to serious crimes should be left to serve their sentences. Ukraine could recruit 10,000 to 20,000 convicts,” according to Miliuska. But, contrary to the Wagner version, those convicted of rape, sexual violence, premeditated murder, terrorism, drug crimes, and even serious corruption will not be included.

But in Russian propaganda and in the eyes and rhetoric of those who are less keen on aiding Ukraine, this will, very likely, be construed as “Ukraine is now doing the same as Putin and Progozhin.” The Ukrainian justice minister acknowledged this: "Of course, there is a parallel. You should not deceive yourself, but it is still a different approach."

(For example, I checked the comments under the article in The Kyiv Independent, and the first immediate comments all draw parallels between this new Ukrainian law and Prigozhin.)

Look, Zelensky, our complaint is not necessarily with a Ukrainian light version of Prigozhin’s tactics.

Having as many Ukrainians as possible fight for their country right now is essential—it is the best thing that Ukraine can do for its overtaxed military, whoever the soldiers are. But—and this is our beef—so far, the president’s policy has not addressed these critical shortages or made a sustained and persuasive case for why patriotic fighting-age Ukrainians should sign up to save their country. This will be another test of his leadership.

Quite the contrary. Until one month ago, only men between 27 and 60 could be drafted into the army. This has left Ukraine’s courageous but ragged fighters with an average age in their 40s — not optimal. The conscription age in most countries that Ukraine seeks money and weapons from is 18. That is also the conscription age in Russia, the enemy with nearly four times the population of Ukraine. The glaring difference and mismatch are becoming evident on the strained 1,000-kilometer front line. Many in the West find no reason for such an abnormally high draft age and want it rectified.

Politics is perception, even more so during wartime. It is not enough to do the right thing. The right thing has to be explained, presented, and well-timed. The information policy on conscription is poor. An effective recruitment campaign explaining the critical need for thousands of fresh soldiers is lacking.

And it’s a trend.

A lot of aid — and not enough

To win this war and ensure survival as a country, Ukraine needs sustained and generous help from the West. So far, adding in the latest $61 billion U.S. aid package, Ukraine has perhaps received as much as $450 billion in aid — probably half of that in military assistance alone since the full-scale invasion in 2022. The non-military aid props up the Ukrainian state budget and economy. There are also substantial costs in helping more than 5 million Ukrainian refugees settle abroad across Europe and North America. Those costs are going down as more of them integrate into the workforce of their respective countries and pay taxes. And Europe is in no hurry to send most of them home, giving residency status until March 2025. The exceptions may come if host countries decide to encourage fighting-age men in their midst to return to Ukraine. Rebuilding costs, already at least hundreds of billions, keep going up with each of the daily missile or drone strikes by the Russians. Experts estimate that the full rebuilding of Ukraine could yet reach $1 trillion. And that money can only come from the West.

The aid has been generous, even if inadequate to the military task at hand — driving Russian forces out of the nearly 20% of Ukraine that they occupy. Ukrainian attempts to explain the high conscription age as saving a young generation or keeping the economy alive fall flat. If Russia wins the war, there is no longer a country or an economy to save — those who survive will either live horribly under Russian occupation or be forced to flee abroad by the millions.

The best argument Ukrainians have for not recruiting more men to the front is that they lack enough weapons to provide them—that has been, and likely will be, the West’s job for years to come. America’s military is trained and equipped so strongly that soldiers can go to war with a high degree of confidence that they will survive the battles. Ukrainian men are, for obvious reasons, not so confident.

The truth and morality of the fight remain with Ukraine, no matter its flaws. Even Zelensky’s critics give him high marks for rallying the nation — after initial inaction — in the first two years of the war, especially. He understands he could easily lose his life, as the recurring assassination attempts underscore, but he’s staying to the end. That is courage. “I need ammunition, not a ride,” is one of the great rallying cries of all time. His combat gear, his willingness to go to the front, his nightly videos, and more make him as inspiring as Winston Churchill in World War II.

Lack of ammunition is only half the story

But Zelensky has his flaws. Overworked and worried about his nation’s survival, he sometimes seems strident and unreasonable. But supporters of Ukraine can forgive those human traits. What’s harder to hide is the dithering over the obvious need to put society on a permanent war footing — to become “a big Israel” — as Zelensky said early in the war. This will require him to fix the conscription and mobilization problems now so that hundreds of thousands of trained and well-equipped soldiers can keep getting rotated to front-line duty for years or, God forbid, decades to come. This is life next to an imperialistic neighbor. Has Zelensky forgotten Churchill’s phrase — “I never worry about action, but only about inaction”?

Only in April this year did Zelensky sign a law lowering the conscription age from 27 to 25. But the new law had been sitting on Zelenky’s desk for at least 10 months, and nobody has explained why.

“Ten years into the war, but Ukraine wasted eight years, in my view, institutionally,” retired U.S. General Ben Hodges told Brian Bonner on his “Ukraine Calling” program for Hromadske Radio. “There should be mountains of artillery ammunition everywhere, equipment. But those eight years between 2014 and 2022 were not properly utilized to get ready for an expansion of the conflict. And that includes modernizing the personnel system, getting everybody accountable, and thinking through how we will expand if we have to fight Russia in a more direct way, which, of course, is what happened two years ago.”

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of parliament who supports recruiting prisoners for the fight and who wants to mandate limits on the time that a soldier must fight, said Ukraine will not win the numbers game against Russia.

“Whatever we would do, Russia always could take more people to the front line than we can,” Goncharenko told Brian Bonner for an upcoming episode of his “Ukraine Calling” program on Hromadske Radio. “So, for us, the most important is that these people should have the best weaponry, the best tactics, and the best strategy. This is the only way for us to win.”

Zelensky has stressed that the delay in the West’s deliveries of promised weaponry has cost many soldiers their lives. In February, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov toured the trenches, claiming that “half of all Western military support promised fails to arrive on time, costing the lives of soldiers. Whenever a commitment doesn’t come on time, we lose people, we lose territories.”

The Ukrainian president told the press that four brigades did not take part in the country’s counteroffensive against Russian forces last year because they hadn’t received the equipment they were expecting. “Can you imagine the numbers of guys who would have fought, who couldn’t? The ones that had to sit and wait for the equipment they never received?”

That is a powerful argument, one that eventually persuaded Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to change his mind and allow Congress to vote on the $61 billion military aid package because he wanted “to be on the right side of history.”

But the Ukrainian president’s argument about the lack of Western weapons is severely weakened when—according to experts and Zelensky’s generals and advisers—Ukraine is, as Politico put it in February, “…desperately short of [both] men and desperately short on ammunition.” This means that the lack of ammunition is only half the story.

In January, Zelensky adviser Mykhilo Podolyak had warned that keeping the conscription age at 27 was untenable and that more men were needed in the army. “Everyone must determine for themselves the price they are willing to pay. To live in a prison camp or a free country.” According to a New York Times headline, based on reporting from Kyiv, “Zelensky Lowers Ukraine’s Draft Age, Risking Political Backlash.” And the subhead: “The idea of requiring more men to join the fight against Russia’s invasion has become toxic.”

It seems that the Ukrainian president only acted after increasing Western criticism of the uniquely high Ukrainian conscription age. Headlines like these in leading Western media, The Economist and The Times, do not look good.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, on a visit to Kyiv in March, told Zelensky that Ukraine needed to call up the younger men and stop draft dodging: “I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27.... you’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.”

Leadership needed to fix the manpower shortage

The dithering on the conscription age (and punishing draft dodgers) has played directly into the hands of those who do not want to help Ukraine, such as the Republican Senator J.D. Vance. In an essay in the New York Times on April 12, headlined “The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up,” Vance wrote: “President Biden wants the world to believe that the biggest obstacle facing Ukraine is Republicans and our lack of commitment to the global community. This is wrong … Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers.”

This is only one step away from shifting responsibility on Ukraine—“Why should we give you weapons when you cannot get your own house in order?” As Politico writes, “Ukraine is fielding a largely volunteer middle-aged army … and there is also mounting evidence of draft dodging.”

Draft dodging is another obvious problem that Zelensky so far has preferred not to touch seriously. Under martial law, all men 18 to 60 are already prohibited from leaving the country. However, according to the BBC, no less than 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age had fled the country after the war broke out. Astonishing data from Financial Times shows that out of 11 million men aged between 25 and 60, only 3.7 million are eligible for the draft, the rest are either officially disabled, out of the country or considered “critical workers.”

According to Spanish government statistics, 200,000 Ukrainians are now there, although immigration experts say the real number is closer to 300,000. The Spaniards have been gracious in their reception of the Ukrainian refugees. Still, recently, the right wing and its media have quietly started asking why you can see so many Ukrainian men here while their country is under heavy attack and asking for military aid: “Without enough troops, the military aid from the West won’t make much difference,” one of the right-wing papers recently remarked. The same comments are, slowly but surely, popping up in France, Poland, and Italy. You would have to be extraordinarily naive to believe that Europeans will not put two and two together, or rather three and three, so to speak: on the one hand, watching the Ukrainian president ask for military aid and, on the other hand, opening their paper and reading about the lack of soldiers in the Ukrainian army, and thirdly, seeing many young Ukrainian men in their streets. Men make up no less than 40% of the Ukrainian refugees in Spain, and according to local immigration officials, in 2023, more Ukrainian men than women entered the country. Anecdotal evidence - checking out the groups for “Ukrainians in Barcelona/Valencia/Malaga etc.,” shows how many men between 25 and 50 are looking for work and flats in Spain now.

The BBC reports about Ukrainian men who paid up to $10,000 for a certificate confirming their unfitness for military service, the author of the article writes.

In August, Zelensky issued a decree to review the decisions of military medical commissions on fitness for military service issued since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia. Zelensky admitted that thousands of people who did not have such a right have slipped out of Ukraine due to corruption in military medical commissions. He also stated that all regional officials who were responsible for military conscription have been fired, and more than 30 people have been prosecuted.

Draft dodging is so pervasive that experts estimate that the recent change in conscription age from 27 to 25 years, which, according to Zelensky, should yield 400,000 recruits, will, in reality—when draft dodging and medical disqualifications are taken into consideration—only mean only 200,000 new soldiers.

At the end of April, the Ukrainian government finally declared that it was fed up with the draft-dodging; the government decided that Ukrainian men aged 18-60 could no longer renew their passports at Ukraine’s embassies abroad or via post, only in Ukraine. “It’s a question of justice,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. “A man of conscription age went abroad, showed his state that he does not care about its survival… it does not work this way. Our country is at war." But, in reality, critics say, this is an empty gesture, considering the effect may not be felt for 5-8 years or whenever a passport expires.

Anger rising in society and among allies over draft dodgers

Poland—which houses more than one million Ukrainian refugees—would be happy to help Ukraine with draft dodgers, said Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. "I think many Poles are outraged when they see young Ukrainian men in hotels and cafes and hear how much effort we have to make to help Ukraine.” It is believed that there are no less than 400,000 Ukrainian men of military age in Poland. According to CNN, Poland’s total annual spending on Ukraine and Ukrainians - military and economic aid, as well as support for the many refugees - amounts to more than 4% of its GDP.

In April, a survey showed that half of Ukrainians were willing to “show understanding” to draft dodgers, while almost as many wanted such men punished and brought home. Soldiers at the front lines speak contemptuously of those fighting-age Ukrainians who are sitting out the war.

Several – many, in fact - of my former students from Lviv in western Ukraine, where Ukrainian pride and nationalism traditionally have been strong, dropped whatever job they had on Feb. 24, 2022, and joined the army. Recently, when Michael Andersen asked them about draft dodging by their peers, they answered me with terms that cannot be printed; the nicest descriptions were “corrupt” and “fucking cowards.”

This week, Michael Andersen asked a close Ukrainian friend - she works in a leading position in a large international nongovernmental organization, and her husband is a high-ranking officer in the Ukrainian army - about the new draft age of 25 and draft dodging: “I think that everybody from the age of 22 should be drafted, men and women. It must look weird to the rest of the world that Kyiv is full of young people sitting in cafes while we are asking the West for money and weapons.”

The uneven implementation of the draft is leading to anger in villages, where people have seen their sons and fathers being forced into the army. “People are being caught like dogs on the street,’’ some say, while the youth in Kyiv live the high life as if nothing has happened. In the long term, this is not sustainable. The draft dodging also has deadly consequences: the lack of recruits means that soldiers on the front line aren’t getting enough rest in between rotations; many have been there for two years without rest, with the enormous personal sacrifices and risks that entails. People make mistakes when exhausted — those mistakes can be fatal at the front, and if not, effectiveness in fighting suffers.

As Two Grumpy Old Men on Ukraine has documented, there is still overwhelming support for helping Ukraine in the West. However, support and empathy for Ukraine will inevitably shrink with time.

Ukraine must show it is doing everything to win if it expects the West to do the same. Conscripting prisoners, as Russia does, smacks of desperation. Insisting on an unreasonable high conscription age risks a drop in support among Western allies. At the very least, the world deserves better explanations for what Ukraine is doing — or not doing — and why. And Ukrainians have to be told that those who are fit and of fighting age need to help their compatriots save their nation from a Russian takeover. If a foreign enemy had taken over nearly 20% of America and many other countries, everyone would have to be in the fight — one way or the other — either in a direct combat role or one of the myriad support ones.

END