Thousands of Ukrainian prisoners have applied to join the army in return for parole as the country seeks to bolster its infantry ranks in the fight against Russia.
More than 4,000 inmates have applied so far. Under a government deal, prisoners can have their remaining sentences cleared — regardless of length — if they agree to serve in the army without leave until the end of the war.
Upon the war's conclusion, they will be granted parole.
"My mother was in hysterics ... I've been here for five years – a year left and I'm going off to war," said Mykola Rybalka, one of the prisoners who signed up, to Reuters in the yard of his prison in Kyiv region.
Rybalka, imprisoned for theft, is one of 129 prisoners in a colony of 700 who have applied to join the military, according to the justice ministry.
"You know, five years behind these walls leave their mark. You've seen a lot and understood a lot. You're not scared of anything anymore," he said.
Ukraine, with a population of about 38 million compared to Russia's 144 million, has struggled to recruit enough soldiers, especially for frontline positions where they face heavy losses.
Its troops are outnumbered and exhausted. A new law aimed at mobilising several hundred thousand more soldiers has been signed, but it will likely take months for a significant number of new troops to be ready.
Early in the full-scale war, the Russian mercenary group Wagner recruited tens of thousands of Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine, offering a full pardon if they survived six months at the front.
Russia's Defence Ministry has since continued recruiting convicts for its own Storm-Z formations.
In Ukraine, prisoners convicted of certain offences, such as the murder of two or more people, manslaughter through drink-driving, sexual crimes, treason, and corruption, are barred from serving.
According to the justice ministry, 4,564 prisoners have applied to join the army so far. They must pass medical checks and have their application approved by a court—over 1,700 have already been approved.
The minister expects between 10,000 and 20,000 inmates to sign up in total. Maliuska said he hoped most applicants would be serving in about two months.
Reuters witnessed a local courthouse where a judge approved the application of a man serving a sentence for armed robbery via video link from prison, a process that took about 10 minutes.
Judge Dmytro Tkachenko stated that the prison ensured applicants met the legal criteria, and he and two other judges had been hearing between 10 and 20 such cases daily over the past week.
Of about 100 cases, only two were rejected due to applicants changing their minds.
Under the new law, 782 prisoners have already been freed and handed over to the armed forces.
Maliuska noted, "They (will be) in the media spotlight, and if there is a single deserter or a single crime, that would be the type of thing in the media that would be bad PR for us."
Twenty-three-year-old Vitaliy Yatsenko, halfway through a seven-year sentence for selling drugs, expressed his desire to join the army, saying: "First of all, I want to help my country. And I want society to understand that people have the ability to rehabilitate.”
