Corruption in Ukrainian conscription

Wednesday 24 December 2025

Corruption surrounding mobilisation in wartime Ukraine has never been a single, centrally directed scheme. It is better understood as a constellation of overlapping networks that monetise discretion: the authority to classify a man as fit or unfit for service, to register or fail to register him correctly, to grant a lawful deferment or fabricate an unlawful one or, in some cases, to steer him towards a safer posting away from the most exposed parts of the front line. These networks have proved resilient because they operate at the junction of four powerful pressures: an existential war requiring mass mobilisation, a bureaucracy that still contains paper bottlenecks and local discretion, a society with uneven institutional trust, and a cash market created by fear, fatigue and the instinct to protect one’s family.

What follows is an examination of the principal corruption pathways that have emerged during the war, and the countermeasures adopted by the Ukrainian state to disrupt them. It also considers why these practices matter militarily, not merely legally, by shaping morale, cohesion, and perceptions of fairness within the Armed Forces.

Mobilisation gatekeepers and the price of discretion

Territorial recruitment centres and administrative manipulation

The first and most visible gatekeepers in the mobilisation system are the territorial recruitment centres. Their officials control a series of crucial administrative acts: whether a man is properly registered, whether he is summoned for service, whether he is referred to a medical commission, and whether his file records a legitimate ground for deferment.

Corruption at this level is rarely dramatic. It typically takes the form of delayed or “lost” paperwork, altered records, or the quiet insertion of a status that prevents follow-up. A summons can be postponed indefinitely; a registrant can be shown as already assigned elsewhere; a deferment can appear in a file without lawful basis. Ukrainian investigative journalists and state investigators alike have repeatedly identified recruitment offices as a recurring locus of bribery and document falsification connected to draft evasion and unlawful travel abroad.

Medical exemptions, disability status, and the monetisation of diagnosis

A second major gatekeeping system lies in medicine, where decisions on fitness for service and disability status carry legal force. Two institutional layers have attracted sustained scrutiny:

• Military medical commissions assessing fitness for service

• Civilian disability assessment bodies whose determinations underpin exemptions or deferments

Since 2023, numerous investigations have exposed schemes involving false diagnoses and fabricated disability status. The problem became politically explosive in 2024, when a major scandal involving allegedly fraudulent disability determinations contributed to the resignation of the Prosecutor General. The underlying mechanics are familiar in any system where medical classification confers legal privilege: a doctor or commission member issues a diagnosis unsupported by clinical reality, which the recipient then uses to exit the mobilisation pool or to restrict the type of service he may lawfully be assigned.

In wartime Ukraine, however, the consequences are amplified. Every false exemption not only deprives the Armed Forces of manpower, but concentrates risk more heavily on those who remain, often young men without money or connections.

Borders, forged documents, and organised escape

Because martial law restricts men of conscription age from leaving Ukraine, the border has become a third critical gatekeeping zone. Here corruption ranges from the use of forged or fraudulently obtained documents at checkpoints to covert crossings facilitated by organised intermediaries, sometimes with the involvement of corrupt law enforcement or border personnel.

Ukraine’s border authorities have reported thousands of detected cases involving forged or invalid documents and hundreds of criminal investigations linked to attempted illegal crossings. International and Ukrainian media have described organised groups charging large sums to move men across the border, often using false disability registrations or fictitious caregiving roles, with arrests occasionally including border guards themselves.

Legal deferments as a tradable commodity

A further pathway exploits lawful deferment mechanisms. Like other states at war, Ukraine recognises that certain civilian roles are essential to national survival, from critical infrastructure and defence production to healthcare and governance. Students are a notorious deferment route; hence the demand for PhD enrolments, often on bogus courses, is high. The state therefore provides mechanisms to defer or “reserve” such workers.

Where a legal category exists, a market tends to form around proving membership of it. Investigations have repeatedly alleged schemes in which deferments or reservations were granted in exchange for bribes, supported by fictitious employment contracts or fabricated documentation. The governance challenge here is not the existence of deferments, which are unavoidable, but the vulnerability of the evidentiary pipeline to falsification.

From avoiding service to avoiding danger

Not all corruption aims to remove a man entirely from military service. A significant portion seeks instead to reduce exposure to danger once mobilisation has occurred.

Rear postings and “soft” assignments

Modern war requires vast numbers of personnel away from the trenches: logistics, training, engineering, communications, procurement, vehicle maintenance, medical services, air defence, territorial defence and infrastructure protection. These roles are essential and often dangerous in their own way, but they are commonly perceived as safer than infantry service at the most exposed sections of the front.

This creates an incentive to influence assignment and posting. Payments may be made to intermediaries with access to personnel (кадрові) officers or commanders, or paperwork may be manipulated to show that a conscript’s skills are uniquely required in a rear function. While harder to quantify than outright draft evasion, this form of corruption follows a familiar wartime pattern and is widely discussed within Ukrainian society and the Armed Forces themselves.

Why these networks persist

Three structural features explain the persistence of mobilisation-related corruption despite clear political will to confront it.

First, speed. Mobilisation must proceed rapidly, increasing reliance on discretionary judgement and reducing opportunities for thorough audit.

Secondly, scale. Mobilisation touches recruitment offices, hospitals, employers, universities, courts, police, and border posts, creating a vast administrative surface area.

Thirdly, adaptability. Corruption networks respond quickly to enforcement pressure, shifting from one mechanism to another as channels are closed.

The Ukrainian government’s countermeasures

Purge and rotation of recruitment leadership

A pivotal moment came in August 2023, when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the dismissal of the heads of regional recruitment structures amid corruption concerns. The move was both practical and symbolic: it disrupted entrenched local patronage networks and signalled that recruitment offices would no longer be treated as private fiefdoms.

Investigations and enforcement actions

Multiple law enforcement bodies have been deployed against mobilisation corruption, including the Security Service of Ukraine, the State Bureau of Investigation, and specialist anti-corruption institutions. These bodies have conducted raids, arrests, and asset seizures linked to fraudulent exemptions, illegal travel schemes, and bribe-taking by officials.

At the institutional level, investigations have had tangible consequences, most notably in the disability-exemption scandal that led to the Prosecutor General’s resignation. At the operational level, arrests of organised groups involved in forged documentation and border crossings have continued, including cases implicating serving officials.

Legal reform and digitisation

Structural reform has accompanied enforcement. Amendments to mobilisation and registration law in 2024 sought to tighten procedures, broaden the state’s access to reliable data, and reduce the population of men who exist only partially within official records.

Digitisation has been another pillar of reform. By moving away from paper certificates and fragmented local registers, the state aims to reduce opportunities for quiet falsification and to enable anomaly detection. Digitisation does not eliminate corruption, but it alters its economics, making large-scale manipulation harder and riskier.

Scrutiny of medical and disability decisions

Following the disability scandals, intensified audits of medical determinations have become unavoidable. Law enforcement has focused not only on individual bribe takers but on identifying networks of clients and repeat patterns, attempting to dismantle entire systems of fraudulent medical decisions rather than isolated cases.

Battlefield cohesion, morale, and the cost of unequal sacrifice

The military consequences of mobilisation corruption extend far beyond numbers. Units are social organisms. They depend on trust, shared risk, and the belief that sacrifice is distributed according to law and necessity rather than wealth or connections.

When soldiers believe that others have bought their way out of service, or into safer roles, resentment grows. This resentment may not immediately manifest as open defiance, but it corrodes cohesion over time. Front-line troops become more cynical about orders from rear-based institutions; rumours about preferential treatment spread rapidly; discipline becomes harder to enforce in environments already strained by exhaustion and loss.

Unequal risk distribution also affects combat performance. Units with a disproportionate share of men who could not evade mobilisation often include more inexperienced or socially marginalised soldiers. This can translate into higher casualty rates, reduced initiative, and greater vulnerability to panic under fire. In extreme cases, perceptions of unfairness contribute to desertion or refusal to rotate back into exposed positions after rest periods.

For a state fighting a long war, this moral dimension is strategic. Mobilisation corruption does not merely weaken legality; it weakens legitimacy. Soldiers who believe the system is fundamentally unfair are less likely to endure prolonged hardship, no matter how strong their patriotic commitment at the outset.

What success looks like

Eliminating mobilisation corruption entirely is unrealistic in a prolonged war. Success is better measured by shifts in incentives and probabilities:

• Fraudulent exemptions become difficult to obtain at scale through audited medical systems

• Forged paperwork becomes easier to detect through standardised, digital records

• Border corruption becomes riskier and more expensive for organisers through targeted prosecutions

• Postings and transfers become more transparent, reducing the scope for paid influence

Ukraine has moved in all these directions through political intervention, sustained investigations, and legal reform. The challenge now is endurance. A war measured in years consumes not only ammunition and manpower, but public trust. Mobilisation corruption is one of the fastest ways to squander that trust, because it transforms national defence into a marketplace of money and connections. The effort to dismantle these networks is therefore not merely a legal or administrative task. It is a central element of sustaining the moral contract between those who fight and the society that asks them to do so.