Zelenskyy wants Ukrainian refugees back for combat. Will the plan work?

When Russia began attacking Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Vitalii Kravchenko was shocked to see the scenes of mayhem from far away Canada while anxious calls to his relatives trapped in Ukraine remained unanswered for almost two weeks.

"It was the hardest time in my life. You can't imagine what emotions you can experience when, after two weeks, you receive a long-awaited call from your loved ones ... My family was forced to abandon everything they had gained over the years and flee to the west of Ukraine in the name of salvation," Kravchenko, 40, told TRT World in an email interview from Canada.

Kravchenko said he lost his cousins and friends in the war which has already hit the 935-day milestone and consumed the lives of tens of thousands and displaced millions others.

The situation was even more challenging for Yevheniia and her daughter Kit Elvira, then aged 10.

A week into the war, they first fled to Poland and then months later found refuge in Canada, where they met Kravchenko, who married Yevheniia.

"My family is still in Ukraine. I lost my father two months ago. I couldn't even go to the funeral because now women are being registered to fight, and my nephews and friends are at the front," Yevheniia told TRT World.

"Young men are losing their lives, innocent children and people are dying from these missiles. I fled with my daughter to save her from the war and improve her future life."

Kravchenko's family is not alone.

While some 3.7 million Ukrainians remain displaced internally, estimates suggest that some 6.7 million Ukrainians live outside of Ukraine, with the vast majority of them spread across Europe.

With Ukrainian forces strained under Russia's pressure on the extensive 1200-km front lines and Ukraine bolstering reinforcements every day, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now urging diaspora Ukrainians who fled the war to return and pick up arms against Russian troops.

On August 27, he revealed that he is seeking to create a ministry to unite and bring Ukrainians living abroad back to their country.

"We need to bring back the adult population, we need to bring back our children and students without coercion. We need to create all the conditions for them to want to do this," Zelenskyy said, adding a decision about the ministry is expected to be made soon.

"This is a very difficult mission for any ministry. I'm not talking about people, not about personalities, I'm talking about the institutionalisation of this process. No one has had such a challenge as returning 7.5 million people," he said.

But refugees such as Kravchenko say they may not go back to Ukraine under Zelenskyy's plan.

"We are not planning to return, we are building our lives in Canada. Canada has accepted us, and we are doing everything in our Ukrainian community to help Ukrainians in Canada and our valiant army," Kravchenko said.

"To protect our family and daughter, we would like to stay in Canada," Yevheniia told TRT World.

Carrot and stick policy to recruit

Ukraine has so far adopted many measures to boost its recruitment numbers.

In May this year, a divisive mobilisation law in Ukraine came into force that Ukraine said will make it easier to identify every conscript in the country and help replenish depleted forces.

Ukraine has also barred men under 60 from fleeing the country since the war began, but some are exempt, including those who are disabled or have three or more dependent children.

Zelenskyy also signed laws, allowing prisoners to join the military and increasing fines for those dodging recruitment fivefold.

The government has reportedly suspended consular services for men who are not registered with the military.

Despite these challenges, Ukraine is actively recruiting more soldiers to combat Russia's advancing forces.

Experts say luring back Ukrainians living abroad, especially in Europe and the Americas, for fighting will not be an easy task.

"Almost all people who would like to fight for their country volunteered to join the military a long time ago," Arkady Moshes, director of the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told TRT World.

"Those who have not done it as of yet will be very reluctant to do so," Moshes said.

Ukrainian refugees, he said, are fast integrating into the countries in which they reside but "financially, they can support both their relatives and various fundraising campaigns intended to help Ukraine."

Lubomyr Luciuk, a Canadian academic and author of books in the field of political geography and Ukrainian history, told TRT World those who left Ukraine and found asylum in Poland, or elsewhere "are not likely to return to Ukraine until a victory has been secured."

With many refugees being women, children and elders, Luciuk said that every month passing "makes it more likely they will get on with their lives and put down roots in the countries that provided them with an opportunity to recuperate from the traumas of war and forcible emigration."

Others say the new Ukrainian ministry to help refugees return could try to impose sanctions on Ukrainian refugees if the incentives fail to encourage them to return.

Ukrainian-born sociologist and researcher at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Volodymyr Ishchenko, told TRT World that the incentives for the Ukrainian diaspora to go back would be largely negative.

"The ministry will lobby for various negative sanctions and complications to make life more difficult for Ukrainians abroad, so that they might consider returning to Ukraine. The question is how much the EU and other foreign governments will accommodate," Ishchenko said.

Ethno-nationalist transformation of Ukraine?

Zelenskyy in his recent remarks stressed that one of the goals of the ministry is to unite all Ukrainians living abroad, although it wasn't clear what he meant by saying this.

But when it comes to the ministry's impact on the Ukrainian diaspora, analysts differ drastically, ranging from positive to minimal to downright negative.

Moshes told TRT World that the effects on the Ukrainians living abroad "will be minimal", especially in the beginning, adding that "The new ministry may prepare legislation streamlining the interaction between historical Ukrainian diasporas (people of Ukrainian decent who are not Ukraine’s citizens) and the current Ukrainian state. It’s difficult to say if the ministry is given the resources needed to deal with the people from the latest wave of emigration."

However, Ishchenko said the consequences will be largely negative, citing two possible primary objectives of the ministry.

"First, this ministry will work to bring Ukrainian men back to Ukraine from abroad. The majority of Ukrainian men went abroad legally to study or work, but are now being turned into technical draft evaders by the changes in the mobilisation laws passed this year," Ishchenko told TRT World, adding that 90 percent of Ukrainian men in military duty living abroad have not updated their personal data for military recruitment centres because "apparently (they) do not want to sacrifice themselves for this state."

He was referring to the mobilisation law which makes it easier to identify every conscript in Ukraine and provide incentives for the soldiers.

"Second, the ministry will work to turn the millions of Ukrainians abroad into supporters of the ethno-nationalist transformation of Ukraine. This is called countering the influence of Russian propaganda," Ishchenko added.

"It is a question of integrating the Ukrainians abroad, who have lived in a very different political climate and who diverge from the official Ukrainian line on culture, language, identity, history, religion more and more, into the narrow and reactionary ethno-nationalist agenda."

On the other hand, Luciuk said that it "would be a positive development", saying that Ukrainian refugees often had to deal with "Russian propagandists" since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Creating a government body that can keep all of the Ukrainians in the diaspora informed about matters of mutual concern and interest to Ukrainians regardless of where they might live, were born, or will remain, is potentially very useful," Luciuk said.

"It will not only enhance Ukraine's ability to articulate and promote its narrative abroad but can make it easier to encourage return migration, or, at least, cooperation in the reconstruction of the country in the post-war period, a herculean labour."