Cash bonus for a year fighting Russia? Inside Ukraine's youth recruitment drive

By Anastasiia Malenko

KYIV (Reuters) - You'll receive a generous salary, a bumper bonus and an interest-free loan to buy a home. The challenge? You'll have to fight on the frontlines of Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II. 

It's a tough sell to young people with their whole lives ahead of them.

Two months after Ukraine launched a national drive to recruit young people to fight in its tired and aged armed forces for a year, fewer than 500 have signed contracts, according to Pavlo Palisa, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's military adviser.

Palisa stressed it was early days for the scheme, which was initially confined to six brigades before expansion to 24. The numbers so far provide scant respite for Ukraine's defence forces, which are outnumbered by Russia after three years of war that has killed and injured hundreds of thousands.

Pavlo Broshkov, among the few hundred young people to take up the offer so far, said he viewed military service as his duty and wanted to help spare his six-month-old daughter Polina the horrors he had faced growing up during the conflict.

"I don't want my child to even hear the word 'war' in the future," said the 20-year-old, among seven young recruits interviewed by Reuters who are being sent to fight with frontline units in about two months.

"I simply don't want her to know what it means."

As a new father dreaming of buying an apartment for his family, Broshkov was also attracted by the financial terms of the recruitment scheme, which was launched in February targeting 18 to 24-year-olds who are prepared to fill fighting roles.

On top of the mortgage deal, the package includes a monthly salary of up to $2,900, way above the national average wage of about $520, a cash bonus of 1 million hryvnia ($24,000) and a one-year exemption from mobilization after a year of service.

Broshkov's 18-year-old wife understands the need to defend the country but can't stop agonizing over the danger.

"Death is chasing my husband now and it can catch up with him at any time," said Kristina Broshkova, who moved back with her parents.

"Money is a motivation, but dying for money is not really worth it."

'THEY ARE STILL BIG CHILDREN'

The young recruits are preparing to head to the front at a time when Russian forces continue assaults along multiple fronts even as the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump seeks a negotiated ceasefire.

Zelenskiy said in January that Ukraine had 980,000 people in arms, while last year the Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the size of the Russian armed forces to be increased by 180,000 to 1.5 million active service personnel.

A Ukrainian draft has been in place for most adult men after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, and Kyiv reduced the age of those required by law to join up from 27 to 25 last year in a bid to invigorate their forces.

The youth recruitment scheme marks a departure from the forced mobilization, which was hampered by public mistrust, and is part of a broader drive to make the military more professional and sustainable, officials say.

The average age of Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield is 45, a senior diplomat source with knowledge of the country's defence capabilities told Reuters.

Serhii Filimonov, commander of the Da Vinci Wolves battalion serving on the eastern Pokrovsk front, said many motivated young people had joined up even before the recruitment drive. So he didn't expect many 18 to 24-year-olds to sign up to the scheme, adding that money alone wasn't sufficient motivation to fight a war.

"You have to fight for your friends, for your family, for the future, not for a million hryvnias."

Nonetheless, Oleksandr Moroz, military instructor at one of the brigades, said most of the young men he had trained were attracted by the financial benefits, though described the recruitment to date as "a drop in the ocean" in attempts to lower the average age on the frontline.

"At this stage, they are still children, big children," he added as the new recruits learned tactical medicine at a training site.

TIKTOK V REAL LIFE

As well as being enticed by the money, the recruits interviewed by Reuters variously said they joined to defend their homeland, have greater control of their fate than simply being drafted and to potentially forge a military career.

While they still have multiple weeks of training left before deploying, their first experience of simulated artillery and drone attacks came as a shock to some.

"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, a 24-year-old who joined the scheme together with his friend Broshkov.

As instructors practiced drone assaults, one of the main battlefield threats, the two friends got a smoking break in. When instructors learn of such infractions, 100 push-ups are assigned for the entire unit to drill in shared responsibility.

For 18-year-old Yuriy Bobryshev - the first person to join the programme - the motivation to fight was personal.

After escaping the Russian occupation of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region at the age of 15, he is haunted by memories of the violence as well as by the loss of his brother, who was killed there.

"I saw too many bodies," Bobryshev said. "As soon as I left, I wanted to go fight."

(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko; Additional reporting by Yurii Kovalenko; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Pravin Char)