Ukraine has begun releasing prisoners to serve in its army, part of a wider effort to rebuild a military that has been depleted by more than two years of war and is strained by relentless Russian assaults.
A regional court in western Ukraine said on Wednesday and Thursday that it had freed more than 50 prisoners under a new law that allows convicts to serve in the army in exchange for the possibility of parole at the end of their service. It is unclear how many prisoners in total have been released since the law came into force a week ago.
Denys Maliuska, Ukraine’s justice minister, told the BBC this month that 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners could be recruited. The Ukrainian authorities said this week that more than 3,000 prisoners had already applied.
The policy echoes a practice widely used by Russia to bolster its forces, but differs in some crucial ways. Russia’s program is open to prisoners convicted of violent crimes, while the Ukrainian law does not extend to people convicted of premeditated murder, rape or other serious offenses. The regional court said that most of the men released this week had been convicted of theft.
Ukraine initially mocked Russia’s push to recruit prisoners in exchange for parole earlier in the war. But with the conflict now in its third year and with Ukrainian forces struggling all along the front line, Kyiv desperately needs more soldiers.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in February that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war — a figure that is well below estimates by American officials, who said in August that nearly 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed at that point.
In recent months, Ukraine has lowered the draft eligibility age to 25 from 27, stepped up border patrols to catch anyone trying to avoid being drafted, and passed a law requiring all men of military age to make sure the government has current details about their address and health status. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said this week that about 700,000 people had updated their details on an online platform.
Ukraine’s urgent need for additional troops has become particularly apparent since Russian forces opened a new front in the northeast of the country two weeks ago. The offensive by Moscow has stretched Ukrainian forces and compelled them to redeploy units from other hot spots of the front line, weakening their defenses there.
Under the new law, the decision to free any prisoner so he can join the army must be made by a court. The court that gave its figures on Thursday, in Khmelnytsky, said that most of the prisoners who had applied for conditional release to join the military were young men. It added that many had relatives and friends who had died in the war, motivating them to join the fight.
The move to recruit prisoners has drawn little criticism from the Ukrainian public, with many civilians and lawmakers saying that convicts have a duty to defend their country like any other citizen. They have also said that joining the military to fight against Russia is a chance for redemption.
The law “gives an opportunity to these people who committed crimes to go and help during the war, to prove that they can also be worthy members of society together with the boys who are now defending our country.” Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament, told Ukrainian television this week.
Russia has committed tens of thousands of convicts to the war, enlisting them in special units called “Storm Z” that have been sent on bloody assaults with little regard for casualties. That has helped Moscow gain the upper hand on the battlefield by sheer force of numbers, capturing towns and cities such as Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka in the east.
It remains unclear how Ukraine’s military will use the new recruits. The authorities said that they would also be integrated into special units and that they would not be released until the end of the war.
“I believe that people who have not committed serious crimes, if they serve in special units, perhaps even on the front line, whether they dig trenches or build fortifications, why not,” Pavlo Litovkin, 31, a resident of Kyiv, said in an interview last week. “We should not imitate Russia’s methods of warfare, but we should manage our resources effectively.”
Daria Mitiuk and Anastasia Kuznietsova contributed reporting.
