Russian long-range drones have hit five military draft offices across Ukraine in the past two weeks, in what Kyiv describes as an attempt by Moscow to derail troops being mobilised to fight the Kremlin’s invasion.
Iran-designed, unmanned aerial vehicles hit buildings housing mobilisation centres in the cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia on Monday, injuring more than 70 people, military and city officials said.
Similar drone attacks also targeted draft centres in the cities of Kryvyi Rih on June 30, Poltava on July 3 and Kremenchuk on Sunday. Footage shot by locals in Poltava and Kharkiv showed several drones plunging towards their targets in broad daylight and in quick succession, highlighting the increasing strain put on Ukrainian air defence by relentless Russian aerial bombardments.
The strikes “are an attempt to disrupt the mobilisation process in Ukraine” said Vitaly Sarantsev, spokesperson for Ukraine’s ground forces, adding that he expected the attacks to continue.
Draft offices dot the country and are used by the military to oversee the mobilisation effort, including the processing of new recruits and the granting of deferments. Ukraine can mobilise up to 27,000 people every month, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in June in an interview with the Hungarian publication Válasz.
However, frontline units regularly report an acute lack of manpower even as Russian forces have been pushing forwards in several sectors of the front line.
Servicemen belonging to the mobilisation centre in the Vinnytsia region of central Ukraine have been “dispersed” following the strikes in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, according to a statement released by the Vinnytsia draft office.
“In light of the tense situation in the country, measures are currently being taken to minimise the negative consequences of possible strikes by the aggressor against territorial recruiting and social support centres,” the message reads.
The strikes could also represent a way for Russia to take advantage of the unpopularity of the draft, according to Solomiia Bobrovska, a Ukrainian opposition MP and member of the national security and intelligence committee.
“I don’t think this is about physically stopping mobilisation, because you can just move people to another building . . . but it may be about trying to give people a feeling of satisfaction, getting them to say, ‘Oh that’s what they deserve’.”
Ukrainian opinion polls have shown the complexity of the draft issue: the army as a whole enjoys overwhelming levels of trust, while the draft is seen as necessary but also unjust.
A poll released in June by the independent Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 60 per cent of Ukrainians said they were ready to endure the war “as long as necessary”. However, 77 per cent of Ukrainians distrust the mobilisation centres themselves, according to another survey by the Info Sapiens polling agency in April.
Criticism of mobilisation has been fuelled by regular corruption scandals and by videos published on social media showing men being snatched, sometimes violently, by draft officers.
Rybar, a Russian military Telegram channel run by pro-Kremlin bloggers with 1.2mn followers, said in a post on Monday that the drone strikes were part of a “campaign to destroy the mobilisation infrastructure of the Ukrainian armed forces” that sought to exploit the institution’s unpopularity.
“After today’s hits, we will not be surprised to see new comments approving the actions of the Russian armed forces and suggesting new targets for our Geran [drones] to strike.”
On the Ukrainian side, the Zaporizhzhia mobilisation centre said on its Facebook page that the strike was part of an “information attack”.
“It is a pity that in some cases the actions of the enemy receive support from Ukrainians themselves,” the draft centre said.
The centres have in recent months also been the target of what Kyiv described as a sabotage campaign in which Ukrainians have been recruited by Russian intelligence to set fire to or blow up the draft offices. The operations have sometimes involved people becoming unwitting suicide bombers.
In the past year, Ukrainian authorities arrested more than 700 people implicated in espionage, arson and bomb plots orchestrated remotely by Russian intelligence agents, Ukraine’s security service spokesperson told the Financial Times.
In February, explosions were recorded at or near mobilisation centres in three separate cities over three days. On May 19, Ukraine’s security service said it had arrested a 17-year-old boy who was planning to blow up a draft office in the capital.
In the fourth year of the Russian invasion, the centres remain, despite their unpopularity, crucial nodes in the process of turning a citizen into a soldier.
Though the Ukrainian military has tried in the past year to encourage voluntary recruitment with financial incentives, replenishing frontline units relies heavily on compulsory mobilisation.
“Unfortunately, these centres are absolutely key for the mobilisation process,” Bobrovska, the MP, said. “We can’t steer too far away from them, because we have no other real options to get more people into the army.”
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