Lucrative cash bonus for a year fighting Russia

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'l. 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 Zelensky’s military adviser.

- Anastajia Malenko

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.”