A Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) initiative targeting volunteers in the critical 18 to 24 age bracket with big salaries, house loans, and education benefits has delivered its first recruits to the ranks, a General Staff statement said Tuesday.
The official announcement said the military’s campaign to reduce the average age of troops in the AFU was delivering real results, but the numbers of recruits reaching the ranks were not made public.
The inducement package, not available to citizens older than 24, includes a Hr.200,000 ($4,880) signing bonus, a base monthly salary of $2,900, add-ons like hardship and combat pay, free housing, medical and dental, and freedom to travel abroad after one year of service.
Once returning to civilian life, a soldier enlisting in the program will have veterans’ benefits, including a state-guaranteed housing loan at 0% interest, subsidized or free higher education, and reduced prices for utilities like electricity and water.
According to army statements, initial recruit cohorts are reinforcing six seasoned brigades, all with strong fighting records. The armed forces recruiting website identified the units as the 10th Mountain Brigade, 72nd Mechanized Brigade, 95th Air Assault Brigade, 38th Marine Brigade, 28th Mechanized Brigade, and 92nd Mechanized Brigade.
Five of the six are “old army” units with combat experience stretching back to the 2014-15 period and Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine. The sixth unit, the 38th Marines, traces its heritage back to a smaller amphibious assault unit raised at the same time.
The AFU-run recruiting platform is online, and volunteers may pick the unit they want to join. Some units, like the 92nd Brigade, have guaranteed a recruit’s placement, should he or she wish, in frontline specializations like rifleman, grenadier, and scout, as well as less dangerous military jobs like supply or drone operations.
The 92nd is best-known in Ukraine for fighting heavily outnumbered and defeating massive Russian tank attacks in Kharkiv region in the early days of the war.
The 92nd promotional pitch said in part: “We have 10 years of experience fighting the occupier. We kicked the Russians in the teeth at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, retaking Kharkiv. We squeezed the enemy out of the Kharkiv region during the counteroffensive. We held the line on the ‘road of life’ near Bakhmut, destroying the [Russian felon mercenaries] ‘Wagnerites.’ We bravely fought the orcs [Russian troops] on the approaches to Chasiv Yar. Now we are fighting near Toretsk, in Kurshchyna (Russia), and Glyboky. We have experience, a powerful training base, and modern weapons. We are ready to accept motivated people into our unit.”
A Monday report published by the 92nd showed 10 recruits in full kit doing leg lift exercises and weapons drills. A recruit identified as Ivan said he joined up because of the 92nd brigade’s fighting reputation, the opportunity to travel abroad with his girlfriend after his year’s tour is up, and the chance to save money and help out his parents with cash. He said that since joining, he had been paid his Hr.200,000 ($4,880) recruitment bonus on time.
An Air Assault trooper from the 95th Brigade identified as Andriy in a promotional video from that unit said he joined up to defend Ukraine and so that he could buy a house for his parents. A video from the 10th Mountain Brigade showed soldiers hiking through the Carpathian Mountains and zooming along zip lines, along with combat images of tanks, armored fighting vehicles and Russian soldiers being taken prisoner in a trench.
March battle reports from Ukrainian frontline units in practically all sectors of the front, but particularly in the northern Kursk and eastern Pokrovsk battle areas told of powerful Russian assaults against thinly held Ukrainian lines.
Ukraine Defense Ministry spokesperson Dmitro Lazutkin, in Feb. 18 comments, said the 18-24 recruitment program kicked off on Feb. 11 and that it had attracted almost 10,000 applications in a week.
Content published by receiving units a month later showed groups of soldiers numbering 10-20 men.
Statements from receiving brigades said the new soldiers would go through two months of basic training, followed by two to four weeks of specialist training at the receiving unit.
Ukraine has conscription, potentially obligating men aged 18-60 to wartime service, but bars the forced deployment of soldiers aged 24 or younger to combat units.
According to news reports, a typical service member of the AFU is aged 40-50. Ukraine’s allies have criticized the country’s wartime leadership for failing to fill out units with combat-capable young men.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials have said that the Ukrainian military’s personnel shortage is directly linked to limited supplies of equipment preventing the fielding of new combat units.
A few AFU units with excellent combat records and established skilled chains of command can pick and choose recruits, among them the 12th National Guard Brigade (the Azov political group), the 13th Khartiia National Guard Brigade (Greater Kharkiv), the 3rd Assault Brigade (Greater Kyiv) and the 414th Unmanned Aircraft Brigade “Ptakhy Madyara,” commanded by the businessman Robert Brovdi. However, most of the AFU’s reported 110-120 combat brigades are less well-off and more dependent on government recruitment streams.
News reports in late 2024 said that the AFU has, since the full-scale war started, lost more than 100,000 men to desertion, largely because soldiers volunteering for service under standard military contracts have been in the ranks for two or three years, at times in frontline units, without the possibility of quitting service legally. The 18-24 recruitment initiative offers equal or better pay and guarantees departure from the military in one year if the recruit chooses.