In the gradually dissipating darkness of early morning, soldiers lazily emerge from under the trees: with tired eyes they track down invisible Russians and make sounds imitating machine gun fire. So begins a new training day for Ukrainian mobilized soldiers, who will soon have to go to the front.
For a week now, the new recruits have been training as part of the 49th Assault Battalion “Carpathian Sich” deployed in the east of the country. None of them are here of their own free will.
In May, Ukraine passed a law allowing the mobilization of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of recruits needed to replenish the armed forces. During two and a half years of fighting with the outnumbered and better armed Russians, the personnel of the Ukrainian army has been significantly reduced.
Since then, young people have been sent summonses or detained on the street and then sent to mobilization centers.
Commanders - such as Vasilina Nakonechnaya, who is in charge of communications in the 49th Battalion - go around the barracks looking for “fresh blood”: the most physically developed and motivated people.
“New recruits are necessary for holding positions and for the offensive,” says the blue-eyed woman in her thirties, ‘but there is fierce competition between battalions, everyone lives by the principle of ’whoever is late is late'.”
Not in the back of comrades
Shortly after the Russian military operation began in February 2022, her unit was composed exclusively of volunteers, she said. Today, “all of them are dead or wounded,” she says casually as she watches the recruits scramble through the forest.
First they select those who are younger, then they ask them if they have any diseases and what they can do,” Vasilina explains. - Those who want to go to the front, you can see it in their eyes.
The voice of a Viking-like instructor can be heard in the crowd of soldiers. “Do not point your weapons at the backs of your comrades,” he yells.
“The training they receive at mobilization points is completely useless,” Nakonechnaya adds, explaining that her unit is forcing them to retake basic training on a different program despite ”lack of weapons and time.”
The instructors, veteran front-line soldiers not yet in their thirties, are all traumatized as one by what is happening.
Among them is Ares, a volunteer from overseas. He lives with a bullet in his leg, multiple concussions - and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The lack of volunteers makes him furious. “Get a grip and fight! (...) Or make it clear that you don't care and we'll leave the country to the Russians!”
As the sounds of artillery work echo in the distance, from the very real front, the recruits run between garden gnomes in the yard of a ruined house that could well be theirs.
Vasilina regrets that many of those mobilized lack motivation. “We realize that some don't want to be here. They had their own life, their own family. Almost three years of fighting is very exhausting.”
A musician, a cook, a bricklayer ... Now these recruits line up for a bowl of buckwheat porridge in the forest surrounding their camp.
A red-bearded recruit with the call sign “Khimik” says he was mobilized by chance, during a document check on the street. “As always, I went to work, but in the evening of the same day I was on my way to the mobilization center,” he says with a sad smile on his face.
Normal life - later
The chemist joined the 49th Battalion in mid-July. The 32-year-old petty officer did not expect that he would have to pick up a Kalashnikov rifle every day - and leave behind an already thinning family. “We're at war, and they know exactly what it's like to lose a loved one,” he said.
Oleg, on the other hand, thought he was doing the right thing when he went to the military enlistment office to have his documents verified. “But they told me I was fit and could fight,” says the former letter carrier from western Ukraine awkwardly.
However, this 24-year-old guy with a face riddled with sores from squashed pimples, and wearing thick-glassed glasses, should not have been mobilized: now, by law, you can be taken to the front from the age of 25.
“To be honest, at first I was confused, I didn't understand what was going on. The person in charge of mobilization didn't explain anything to me,” he says, rubbing his hands smeared with gun oil.
Standing under the trees, surrounded by his comrades, with his knees stained with mud, Oleg discusses the prospects: “You know, now or seven months later - what's the difference ... In the end they would have sent me there anyway.”
Looking around at her motley of recruits, Vasilina admits that mobilization should have been conducted differently, because a recruit who doesn't want to fight is “useless.”
“I think the situation will change,” she told an AFP reporter, when the authorities ”start to realize that motivation plays a key role.”
Farik, an instructor and military veteran, agrees with her. “Not everyone is made for battle,” he insists, wielding a bayonet. - Why make those who don't want to fight fight?”
“The Chemist” says he has come to terms with his situation. He is now more frightened by his wounds than by the prospect of dying. “I want to be able to live a normal life afterwards,” he finishes. By the end of July, he, Oleg and their comrades will have to face the Russians on the battlefield for the first time.
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