By Galina Korol | 2025-02-26

KYIV -- Russia is drafting men in occupied Ukrainian territory to replenish its army and reduce the Ukrainian population in the region, Ukrainian media say.

Occupation authorities in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (Donetsk province, Ukraine) plan to launch a full-scale draft this spring.

Denis Pushilin, self-proclaimed leader of the separatist territory, signed an order on training conscripts in Russian military specializations.

The document, published February 17 and reprinted the same day by the OstroV news site, couches the draft as a matter of "lessons in valor" and festive sendoffs into the army.

The ruse does not work, say analysts.

"This is actually the beginning of a draft that will indeed be coercive because the occupation's local governments are drawing up lists of men who must submit to training in military specializations," Petro Andriushchenko, director of the Center for the Study of the Occupation, told Kontur.

Military training will take place at a site operated by the Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air Force and Navy of Russia, according to Pushilin's decree. The organization is a successor of the Soviet DOSAAF, which sought to propagandize military service.

Pushilin's gambit is "broadly speaking, a draft," said Andriushchenko.

Genocide through the draft

In occupied Ukrainian territory, Russian authorities have stepped up draft registration, even if the targeted males are still attending school, according to Andriy Chernyak of Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR).

"They go to schools. They go to businesses. They keep a tally and try to draw in as many men of draft age as possible," Chernyak said in a statement published on the HUR website February 14.

"The first task that Russia sets for itself is to scrub the temporarily occupied territories of its Ukrainian population," he said.

By drafting men in occupied Ukraine, the Kremlin fills its army's ranks and depletes the ethnic Ukrainian population in those regions, said Chernyak.

It desperately needs new blood because it keeps incurring huge casualties through its inept training and tactics.

What is transpiring "critically violates international principles," said political scientist Yuriy Oleinik, director of research at the NGO Ukrainian Studios for Strategic Research.

"An occupier has no right to ... draft men from occupied territory, but this is happening," Oleinik told Kontur, citing Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions.

Extortion, intimidation and beatings

The occupiers drafted about 300 men in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces from last October 1 to December 31, observers tell Kontur.

Additionally, they forced all males under age 60 to register for military service.

Men "who try to avoid participating in the war against Ukraine are threatened, in particular, with the loss of earnings and means of support," HUR said on Telegram January 9.

Last year, the Center for the Study of the Occupation recorded more than 10 cases of forcible conscription in rural parts of Zaporizhzhia province.

Draft officers "come to a village, round up the men from 18 to 23 years old and take them to the draft office, where they lock them up and start browbeating them," Andriushchenko said.

"They say, 'Either you sign a contract and go into the army to fight, or we'll call you up as part of an urgent conscription campaign. We'll send you to serve in Chechnya, where you'll be raped and made into a slave' and all the rest."

Kherson Provincial Council First Deputy Chairman Yuriy Sobolevsky told Kontur of an equally grotesque incident that occurred in an occupied part of his province.

When one man publicly refused to register for military service, "Russian troops beat him so badly that he ended up in the hospital," said Sobolevsky.

His parents reported the crime to the occupiers' police, but then "troops came and forced them to rewrite the statement," he said.

The amended statement said the man injured himself in a routine "fall."

False promises of payments

The Kremlin tries to con Ukrainians with promises of large payments for signing a military contract.

In Kherson province, it flings about equally false vows to keep signers out of combat and in the province.

Those who sign "get two or three weeks of training and are thrown into a frontal assault... And of course, then they simply disappear," said Sobolevsky.

The Russian army treats drafted Ukrainians as a "lower class," said Oleinik.

Videos online show that Ukrainian men dragooned into the Russian army "were beaten and forced to agree to go to the front," he said.

Those Ukrainians are rapidly becoming victims of the ethnic strife rampant in the Russian army, I Want to Live posted on Telegram January 31.

I Want to Live is a website created by HUR that encourages Russian and Belarusian troops to surrender.

Draftees from occupied Ukraine in the Russian Black Sea Fleet suffer violence and hazing by sergeants from the Caucasus, I Want to Live said.

The abuse included "tossing training grenades into sleeping quarters" of the Ukrainians, it said.

Other forms of abuse include "poor food and supplies and constant psychological pressure from commanders," I Want to Live added.

It urges Ukrainians drafted by the Russian army to surrender at the first opportunity.

"To Ukraine, you are not traitors or criminals. The occupiers intend to use you as cannon fodder in a war against your own country," it said on Telegram.