Ukraine opens its military to the global recruitment market

Ukraine is turning to the global labor market to fill its infantry ranks, with Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announcing, that the government will license private recruitment companies to sign up foreign nationals for the Ukrainian Defense Forces, paying those firms approximately $7,400 per recruit they bring in while offering the soldiers themselves monthly salaries of up to $11,100 for front-line assault positions, in what Fedorov described as the first stage of the biggest military service reform in Ukraine’s history.

The announcement, made in an interview with the YouTube channel Pressing and reported by United24 Media, formalizes and scales a recruitment activity that has been operating informally for years. Thousands of foreign fighters have served with Ukrainian forces since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, primarily through the International Legion of Ukraine, a volunteer formation established by presidential decree that has attracted fighters from dozens of countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Georgia, and across Europe. Fedorov acknowledged that several organizations already operating in Ukraine have been finding, processing, and accompanying foreigners who want to join Ukrainian service.

“This is already an established process,” Fedorov said in the interview. “There are several institutions in Ukraine that conduct recruitment of foreigners. They have already brought thousands of people.”

What the new framework adds is scale, structure, and financial incentive. Under the mechanism currently being prepared for Cabinet approval, private companies will be able to obtain licenses to recruit foreign nationals and will receive 300,000 hryvnias, approximately $7,400 at current exchange rates, for each foreigner they successfully bring into Ukrainian service. Fedorov specified that payments will be staged across the recruitment and integration process rather than paid as a lump sum upon signing, a design intended to hold firms accountable not just for finding candidates but for preparing, accompanying, and integrating them through training and into operational units.

The target the ministry is working toward is substantial: Fedorov said Ukraine aims to have foreign nationals fill between 30 and 50 percent of all assault and infantry positions in the Defense Forces. That would represent a fundamental shift in the demographic composition of Ukraine’s ground combat units, the formations that bear the highest casualties and are most directly responsible for the outcome of the attritional fighting that has defined the war’s most recent phase. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi described the reform package as the first stage of a large-scale transformation, with further changes to recruitment and mobilization to follow in subsequent phases.

The salary figures Fedorov cited are designed to make Ukraine competitive in the international market for military volunteers and experienced fighters. Average monthly pay of approximately $7,200 for infantry positions, rising to as much as $11,100 for assault troops, represents a significant premium over what comparable roles pay in most Western military forces, where a new infantry soldier typically earns between $2,500 and $4,000 per month depending on the country and experience level. Fedorov described the new compensation rates as the highest infantry salaries in the world, a claim that reflects the genuine scarcity and value of experienced ground fighters willing to serve in high-intensity combat. The pay increases are part of a broader salary reform announced by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on June 12, 2026, which also raised base pay for non-combat roles to a minimum of approximately $670 per month and introduced new fixed-term contracts giving soldiers a defined service duration for the first time since the full-scale invasion began.

The appeal of those rates to the target audience, however, comes with a complication that Ukraine’s own Deputy Defense Minister Mstislav Banik acknowledged publicly. Current Ukrainian law allows foreign contract soldiers to terminate their service after completing six months, a provision that creates a retention problem if the government is aiming for foreign nationals to constitute up to half of its assault formations. Banik said the ministry is working on the issue but declined to state whether the six-month exit provision will be changed, noting that discussions were ongoing. Addressing that question will be critical to the reform’s long-term success, because a recruitment pipeline producing thousands of foreign soldiers per month loses most of its strategic value if a significant fraction exercises the six-month exit option before accumulating meaningful combat experience.

The logistical and legal framework for scaling to the ministry’s ambitions will require resolving several layers of complexity. Foreign fighters must be screened for military background, processed through Ukrainian immigration and military registration systems, placed into units where language barriers can be managed, and integrated into training pipelines that prepare them for the specific conditions of the war they are joining, which differs substantially from the conventional and counterinsurgency environments most Western volunteer fighters have experienced previously. The staged payment structure for recruiting firms is designed to align those firms’ financial incentives with successful integration rather than mere headcount, but the operational chain from a private recruiter in, say, London or Warsaw to a combat-ready soldier in a Ukrainian assault unit involves multiple handoffs where quality can be lost.

The scale Fedorov described, tens of recruiting companies bringing in thousands of foreign soldiers per month, would represent one of the most ambitious military manpower initiatives any country has attempted in the modern era outside of wartime conscription. Russia, by comparison, has drawn approximately 24,000 African fighters over the entire course of the war and deployed roughly 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean soldiers, numbers that became significant individually but have not transformed the fundamental composition of Russian ground forces. Ukraine is targeting something categorically more ambitious: a structural change to who fills its most dangerous combat roles, implemented through a licensed commercial recruitment market with financial incentives aligned to outcomes rather than inputs.

“We are opening the foreign recruitment market to strengthen combat units and preserve the lives of Ukrainian service members,” Fedorov said.