Ukraine Is Offering Money and Perks for Gen Z to Fight

Ukraine's move to attract new recruits with high salaries and mortgage help echoes similar moves in Russia

- Matthew Luxmoore

Kyrylo Horbenko was 16 years old in the summer of 2023 when he and two dozen of his male friends walked into an army recruitment office in east Ukraine and announced they wanted to fight Russian troops on the front lines. The officials on duty laughed them out, telling them to come back when they were adults. The others later lost interest or went abroad, Horbenko said. But he enlisted immediately after turning 18 in March.

"Who is going to fight, if not us?" the gangly teen asked as he prepared for his army induction course at a training ground in east Ukraine last month.

But Ukraine's leaders hope that in time the program, known as Contract 18-24, will help chase down a demographic they have largely sought to spare from the front lines.

That they are doing so reflects the severity of the manpower deficit that has hobbled Ukraine's defense effort in the face of a relentless Russian onslaught in the country's east. Most men willing to fight signed up long ago, and enlisting more is getting harder each year. Many eligible men—those between 18 and 60 who are banned from leaving the country—are either in hiding or have paid bribes to flee the country illegally and escape the draft.

Kyiv has sought various ways to replenish its ranks after almost 3 years of full-scale war. It has raided nightclubs, allowed convicts early release from prison and unveiled billboards throughout the country proclaiming: "Everyone is going to fight." Last year it lowered the age of compulsory military service from 27 to 25, which only temporarily boosted numbers.

Western allies have long called on Kyiv to lower the age further, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rebuffed such calls, arguing Ukraine needs its youth to rebuild the country once fighting ends. "It's very important for me to safeguard the lives of our people, our youth," he told a French newspaper in December.