Poland: Conscription Offices for Ukrainian Citizens Opened

Having lost control over the strategic town of Ugledar, conquered by the Russian army on October 2, the Kiev military authorities began recruiting military volunteers from among Ukrainian citizens in the Polish city of Lublin. The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine states in its Tg-channel that the first conscription office was opened at the Ukrainian Consulate in Lublin. “A military medical commission is working on the spot. The volunteers are being drilled in a training camp provided by the Polish side,” the ministry said.

Despite the invasion of the Russian territory of Kursk by Ukrainian troops, which is still ongoing, despite the Ukrainians losing more than 14,000 soldiers and a significant part of their conquered lands in the meantime, Kiev has not even remotely succeeded in slowing down the Russian offensive on the eastern front in Donbass. Moscow announces the capture of new villages every day and is gradually laying siege to the logistics hub of Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk in Ukraine since 2016). The town of Ugledar, which Ukraine has transformed into a fortified zone over the past decade, is located at a strategic crossroads that opens the way for further Russian offensives and near the railroad line connecting Crimea to Donbass. Russia currently controls approximately 100% of Luhansk Region and over 60% of Donetsk Region.

In this desperate situation for a Ukrainian army that is disoriented and fragmented, Kiev has said it will be able to lower the age of military mobilization from the current 25 to 20 years. At the same time, thanks to US funding, Ukraine is recruiting mercenaries around the world. The director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov (pictured) has said that most of the foreign mercenaries fighting for Ukraine come from Poland, France, and Georgia. The foreign military unit currently has 18,000 men from more than 85 countries, Bortnikov said. “Polish, French, and Georgian fighters are particularly represented in Ukraine. Recently, we have been recording an increase in the number of mercenaries from Latin America in the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” the FSB director finally noted.