Now, as officers scour the country’s cities to draft men of military age, currently 25 to 60, many people like Vladyslav have gone into hiding, fearful that conscription is a one-way ticket to the front line.

Those fears are backed by some military analysts, who say that Ukrainian troops often lack adequate training, which makes it difficult for Kyiv to hold its lines as they are quickly sent into battle to replace combat losses.

Tymofii Brik, a sociologist at the Kyiv School of Economics, said that polling “suggests the willingness to defend the nation among Ukrainians has remained consistent” throughout the war, with about one-third of people indicating a readiness to serve.

For much of the war’s first two years, the Ukrainian military refrained from large-scale mobilization, relying instead on the tens of thousands of volunteers who joined its ranks after Russia invaded in February 2022.

Oleksandr said he had started assessing which routes were the safest to go to work and monitored groups on the Telegram messaging app where people track draft officers’ movements.

Jack Watling, a military expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London, said that most Ukrainian soldiers were lucky if they got five weeks of training.

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