"You drive through a village and it's like a dead Texas town – only the tumbleweed is missing." What service in Ukraine's enlistment offices looks like from the inside
Over the past year and a half, since Oleksandr Sykalchuk, a 39-year-old military enlistment officer, was shot dead with a rifle at a petrol station in Pyriatyn, Poltava Oblast, the confrontation between civilians and the military over mobilisation has descended into violence.
The lack of attention from the political authorities and, to some extent, society to mobilisation issues has put the "broken windows" theory in motion.
On the one hand, civilians are attacking people in military uniform with knives, pistols and rifles, including those who until recently were defending them at the front. Since the start of the full-scale war, 619 such attacks have been recorded, three of which resulted in the deaths of servicemen.
On the other hand, as recent reports from Odesa show, some servicemen who work at military enlistment offices have been given "leeway" for unjustified violence and corrupt extortion. The servicemen who physically extort money from civilians in minivans moving around the cities undermine trust in a process vital for a country at war – mobilisation.
Throughout these eighteen months, military enlistment offices and the servicemen staffing them have largely remained silent in public. This article is an attempt to understand the makeup of military enlistment offices, how notification groups – those checking men's military enlistment status on the streets, who are also subject to violence – operate, and whether the military enlistment office has the resources and capacity to carry out the functions assigned to it by the state.
The article below describes the experiences of four servicemen who, at different times and in different regions, have served or are serving in the military enlistment office, and were also seconded there to mobilise personnel for their units. All names have been changed at the request of the interviewees.
The makeup of a military enlistment office
A year or two ago, servicemen actively corrected journalists who referred to military enlistment office personnel as "military enlistment office employees" – and there was a reason for that. Each military enlistment office includes both servicemen – those most often mentioned in the news – and civilian staff.
Servicemen can be broadly divided into three groups: the head and deputies, the headquarters staff and the security company.
The military enlistment office head is appointed by the Operational Command of a given region – for example, Operational Command Zakhid (West) or Operational Command Pivden (South). Typically, this is a serviceman with significant experience and a high rank, such as a colonel. It is the head who sets the tone and rules for the entire unit.
The headquarters handles recruitment, conscription, mobilisation and, to some extent, notification. Much of its work involves issuing certificates and processing documents. A particularly notable role is that of the Oberih system operator – someone who undergoes special training, gains access to the register of persons liable for military service, and can place individuals on or remove them from wanted lists.
It is the Oberih operator who assigns a person the status of "wanted" and effectively authorises their street-level expedited mobilisation.
Two of the people featured in this text, Mykola and Valentyn, were assigned to work in military enlistment office HQ immediately after mobilisation – in 2023 and 2025. Neither was eager to serve, but after receiving call-up papers, both fulfilled their constitutional duty.
"I was mobilised straight off the street myself," Mykola told Ukrainska Pravda. "In 2023, I was driving through a checkpoint, was stopped, had my documents checked, and then proudly drove a military enlistment officer to the unit – in my own car. I passed the medical board and within a few hours was already standing in uniform. I stayed there because they needed my specialism [in law – ed.]. The structure is like any other – there are good people and bad people everywhere. It's just that all the world's sins have now been placed on this structure."
Both Mykola and Valentyn had specialist occupational skills that the military enlistment office's bureaucratic system required, making them valuable personnel.
"I thought to myself: serving in my own region in the fourth year of the [full-scale] war is like being born under a lucky star, you have to agree with me here. I never saw military enlistment officers as enemies, I even argued with friends about it, and believed most of the negativity was driven not so much by Russian information operations as by ordinary human fear," Valentyn said. "But I left with a much worse impression."
A third person in this story, Oleksandr, spent a year and a half trying to enlist through his local military enlistment office. No combat unit would take him due to health restrictions. Eventually, after a repeat medical examination, the military enlistment office relented and offered him a staff position.
"However, I should say that what I had been promised at the start didn't become reality – even though I had relevant experience. Because we constantly needed people for notification work," Oleksandr said.
The third group of servicemen in the military enlistment office is the security company. It often includes soldiers who have been transferred to rear positions after being wounded. Some perform daily duties at military enlistment offices – cooking, cleaning and so on. Others go out to distribute call-up papers in the streets and at checkpoints, escort mobilised individuals to training centres, drive service vehicles, and so forth. This is mostly fieldwork and is more dangerous.
It was in the security company that 39-year-old Oleksandr Sykalchuk, who was killed at a petrol station in Pyriatyn, served. He had been escorting a bus of newly mobilised recruits to a training centre.
Another interviewee described an attempted strangulation of a driver from his military enlistment office – one of the mobilised individuals attacked him while the vehicle was in motion on the way to a military unit.
There are relatively few civilian employees in military enlistment offices; they work under military supervision, for example in recruitment departments. Most are women.
In total, a small district military enlistment office may have around 50–60 personnel, while a city-level centre may employ over a hundred.
How notification teams operate
The most difficult and, as recent months have shown, the most dangerous job within the military enlistment office is working in notification teams. These are the crews that check men's military registration documents on the streets and, if they are listed as wanted or have other violations of military registration, take them to the recruitment centre – voluntarily or by force.
Despite Cabinet Resolution No. 560 assigning much of the responsibility for notifying the population – that is, delivering call-up papers – to local authorities (including handing them out themselves), in reality this burden largely falls on the military. Since spring 2024, police have started to provide assistance, particularly with transporting people to recruitment centres.
The problem is that some village heads, mayors and local officials fear backlash from neighbours and relatives, so they avoid distributing call-up papers. At most, they help with mobilising equipment (which is also the responsibility of the military enlistment office), obtaining fuel, and similar tasks.
"They receive the papers that they're supposed to deliver, but they don't go out and do it. They write all sorts of silly replies: this employee is abroad, that one doesn't live here, someone else has problems. I tell them straight, 'You're doing nothing,' and they say: 'We don't want our house burned down later,'" says Mykola, a military enlistment officer.
Only servicemen are sent out to distribute call-up papers – either from the security company or headquarters. For example, Kyiv Oblast Military Enlistment Office says that only combat-experienced soldiers handle notifications (though whether this should be the case remains an open question).
In military enlistment offices with competent leadership, distributing call-up papers is routine work shared among most servicemen on a rotating basis. In centres with more authoritarian leadership, it becomes a form of punishment for failing to meet mobilisation targets.
"If a new person appears who can even slightly cope with notification work, they'll most likely be assigned to it," says Oleksandr, another serviceman.
"Because no one else wants to?" we clarify.
"I don't know a single person who does," he replies. "It's an incredibly thankless, physically and mentally exhausting and objectively dangerous job. On top of that, you have superiors demanding that you meet targets and bring in new recruits.
"Guys who transferred to us from combat units said that there, in the war zone, they felt like soldiers. Here… I will never forgive our authorities for what the image of a soldier in the rear has become."
A similar sentiment is shared by Vasyl, a 37-year-old former serviceman from a brigade of the 3rd Army Corps.
In 2025, Vasyl was seconded for two months to a military enlistment office in Ternopil Oblast. He handed out call-up papers on the streets and mobilised people directly into his own corps as part of a pilot project.
Over those two months, his team mobilised 140 people – a significant number. Meanwhile he continued to oversee his unit fighting in Donetsk Oblast.
"In two months at the military enlistment office, I experienced the worst moral trauma of my four years at the front. When you're with the military enlistment office, everyone hates you – the military, civilians, even your own command. Soldiers on leave try to provoke you into a 'nice viral video', and commanders tell subordinates that if they do a poor job, they'll be sent to the front. Good thing I was going there anyway – once the assignment ended," Vasyl says with a laugh.
Notification teams begin work at 06:00, regardless of the weather. A typical crew consists of three to four people – for example, two military enlistment officers and two police officers. In border areas, border guards may also join.
Each team has its own area of responsibility – for instance, several streets that they go through on foot or by car. They stop men of military age and check their data using the Reserve+ app, if available, or through the Oberih system. The latter requires contacting an operator based at the military enlistment office.
In some small settlements where there are hardly any men left to stop, teams may spend part of the day driving around, waiting in wooded areas or sitting at petrol stations.
"First, because we're lazy; second, because these trips make no sense; third, because neither I nor they need it," Valentyn admits.
There is both shame and relief in his voice – relief that he can finally speak about it. It seems his main reason for talking is the hope that the system can still be changed.
"You drive through a village and it's like a dead Texas town – only the tumbleweed is missing," he says. "Everyone who sees a police car runs behind fences. You overtake a cyclist, stop, and before the police even get out, he's already riding the other way because he knows why we stopped. How are you supposed to mobilise anyone? It doesn't work like this."
In 2023 and even 2024 military enlistment teams could hand out dozens of call-up papers per day, in addition to volunteers who came in on their own. By contrast, in 2025–26 there are days when only one call-up paper is delivered in 16 hours of work.
This makes it impossible to meet recruitment targets – which might be, for example, recruiting enough men to replace infantrymen who have been holding positions near Pokrovsk for 150 days.
"I know people get angry just hearing that there are quotas, but I actually understand it. The Armed Forces have tasks and needs, and each requires a certain number of personnel. That makes sense to me," Valentyn says.
Targets are set daily, weekly and monthly – specifying how many people each military enlistment office must supply to the military. Police have their own quotas, focused on the number of people physically delivered to recruitment centres. Whether they ultimately serve is irrelevant to them.
"The police bring in another homeless person, get their certificate from us saying they delivered someone, and that's it – they're satisfied," Mykola says bitterly.
According to the interviewees, military enlistment offices currently meet around 40–60% of their monthly targets.
"The first person I brought in had a mental disability," Valentyn recalls. "It was obvious he had difficulty speaking. I called the Oberih operator, gave his name – they said he was a violator and hadn't updated his data. The commander shouted: 'Bring him in!' He was crying, the police were shouting. I thought: how did I end up here? What was the point?"
The man was eventually released without penalty. After several months of service he recalls with discomfort and even disgust, Valentyn transferred to a combat unit and now serves in Donetsk Oblast.
According to servicemen interviewed by Ukrainska Pravda, around 20 out of 30 men of military liable age currently stopped by military enlistment teams on the streets are either "reserved" [an exemption given to civilians working in industries critical to the economy or the military – e.g in the energy, defence or specialised technology sectors – ed.] or have deferments due to caregiving, studies, or other reasons. Of the remaining ten, only one is typically fit for service.
Current legislation provides more than 20 grounds for deferment, including continued higher education – even for students aged 30, 40 or 50. The number of reserved citizens is growing; by early 2026 it stood at around 1.3 million – more than the number serving in the Ukrainian army.
Many of these exemptions and "reservations" are, of course, fictitious.
"I was at a checkpoint on the road to Bukovel," says Vasyl. The more expensive the car, the more 'serious' the disability. Rolls-Royces, Bentleys… or they're removed from the register altogether. The first two days I saw this, I was stunned. I had never really thought about mobilisation before – it was the first time I saw how much people don't want to serve."
"When a sales rep selling instant noodles gets a reservation, it's hard not to laugh," Mykola adds.
When asked how often conflict situations arise during document checks, the servicemen we interviewed said – somewhat surprisingly – that it happens quite rarely.
However, wives and relatives of detained men would fairly regularly gather outside military enlistment offices, demanding that they be "released".
"In reality," said Vasyl, "the videos that everyone shares are greatly exaggerated. There aren't that many aggressive people – at most, they might say something to you or grumble. In the two months of my assignment, no one attacked me. There were a couple of times when a crowd gathered to try to take someone back, but I just continued doing my job. When there's shelling, you don't stop – you keep working. How is this task any different?"
Oleksandr, who had actively sought to serve in the military enlistment office, was less fortunate.
At the beginning of this year, while working in a notification team together with police, he encountered a man whose documents they were checking. The man initially responded aggressively, then tried to flee, and eventually opened fire with a firearm.
Fortunately, he did not hit anyone.
"It was a striking experience – when, during wartime, it's not the enemy but a fellow citizen aiming at you," Oleksandr told Ukrainska Pravda.
"When the police officer tried to chase the shooter, I heard people shouting insults at him. They probably just thought we were trying to detain a draft dodger at any cost… It's getting absurd."
Unlike police officers, military enlistment officers working in notification teams do not carry weapons and therefore have no means of self-defence. In rare cases, some bring their own registered firearms, particularly for checkpoint duty, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
Some of the military enlistment officers we spoke to have not even completed basic military training. Due to training centres being overloaded, those serving in positions in the rear are sent for training on a rotating basis.
"In this regard, the state is the biggest bastard," said Mykola. "It hasn't given you any real tools for mobilisation, no right to defend yourself. You just stand there, take everything people throw at you, and then they still ask: 'Where are the results? Where's the plan?'"
Mobilisation as a form of power and a source of income
Alongside the painful stories of attacks on military enlistment servicemen who are genuinely trying to serve the state, there are also those who have turned their service and authority into a means of earning money and exerting pressure – as is often the case with almost any social group that gains power.
Of the four people featured in this piece, only Valentyn encountered such examples (or at least he is the only one who admitted it).
The scale of corruption in his particular military enlistment office is not comparable to that reported in Odesa, for instance. However, these examples still help illustrate what is happening in smaller towns across the country.
Valentyn divided the servicemen in his military enlistment office into those who had "crawled out of the trenches" – meaning soldiers transferred to the rear after being wounded (like himself) – and those who had "latched onto rear service".
He primarily placed the head of his military enlistment office and his deputies into the second category. They seemed to have arranged fake certificates for themselves – citing caregiving responsibilities or personal disabilities – in order to remain in the rear for as long as possible. Meanwhile, subordinates were regularly threatened with being sent to the front – which Valentyn eventually volunteered for – for failing to meet mobilisation targets.
In Oleksandr's military enlistment office, commanders punished subordinates for missing targets with sudden late-night assignments – at 21:00 or even midnight – despite the fact that these contravened regulations.
Among all the interviewees, Valentyn was the most critical of his former place of service – and not without reason. He held a key staff role as an operator of the Oberih unified register of conscripts.
In his conversation with Ukrainska Pravda, Valentyn said colleagues repeatedly approached him with requests not to place certain individuals on the wanted list – and he complied.
"Don't flag that one – he's the only priest left in the village, how can the village function without him, who will bury people? Another – because he's a bedridden person with a disability without official documents, since childhood – well, that I can understand, actually.
"But there were also cases of 'just don't flag him' because he's a relative or a friend. These are small communities, everyone knows each other. They all support each other.
"Another example: we put citizen N on the wanted list, and a higher-level military enlistment office removes him. Then two or three days pass, and suddenly he becomes officially exempt," Valentyn says.
Incidentally, Vasyl from the 3rd Corps said one of the reasons his team managed to mobilise 140 people in two months in Ternopil Oblast – a very strong result – was that they were not locals and so the team had neither the desire nor the temptation to "let them off the hook".
In addition to helping "their own", Valentyn says his colleagues were also motivated by profit. There were several different schemes.
Servicemen in notification teams could send citizens' data to Valentyn, as the Oberih operator, via private messages instead of the official work chat. This meant that, for a certain sum, a person could be released and it would appear as though they had never been stopped – at least until they encountered another team.
Servicemen from the security company escorting mobilised individuals to training centres or military units could arrange for a specific person to "escape" at a designated point along the route.
"In that case, the serviceman who 'lost' the recruit gets fined UAH 20,000 (about US$452) – but earns about US$2,000 from it," Valentyn explains.
This is not an exhaustive list of schemes operating within the military enlistment offices – there are certainly more, and some on a larger scale.
The aim of this piece, however, is to reflect the experiences of servicemen who have served or are serving in such institutions and feel a need to speak about the system's problems in order for them to finally be addressed.
***
Forced mobilisation is an integral part of any prolonged war. And now, in the 12th year of the Russo–Ukrainian war, its effectiveness is increasingly being called into question.
To a large extent, this is because the state, represented by the president and the Ministry of Defence, and society, represented by opinion leaders, have distanced themselves from it.
Both the authorities and society have shifted the burden of mobilisation onto the most disenfranchised and compliant social group – servicemen. And the military enlistment personnel interviewed by Ukrainska Pravda say openly: they are not coping.
Because of a lack of personnel, resources and authority. Because of the absence of a coherent state policy on mobilisation and, to some extent, even the state's neglect and detachment from the process. A lack of trust. Cracks within the system itself, often led by individuals driven by personal gain. And, of course, because of the one and a half million Ukrainians who are doing everything they can to avoid military service – something we all, in one way or another, tolerate.
The mobilisation system needs change. We all need change – if we are to survive.
Olha Kyrylenko, Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by Myroslava Zavadska
Edited by Shoël Stadlen