Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhiy Korytskyy announced the creation of a specialized Center for Recruiting Foreigners and Stateless Persons within the National Guard. According to him, the structure will coordinate the recruitment of foreign volunteers for contract service and support candidates at every stage — from interviews and vetting to preparation for service. This is reported by RBC-Ukraine, and the information is corroborated by other Ukrainian media outlets.
What the new center will do
The center's key task, as emphasized by the head of government, is to make the path from submitting an application to actual enrollment in a unit as fast as possible. As envisioned by the authorities, this will allow combat brigades to receive the necessary reinforcements more quickly. The center will take on administrative and organizational support: interviews, verification of documents and motivation, as well as the preparation of volunteers, in order to minimize the bureaucratic delays that previously slowed the integration of foreign fighters into the ranks.
Recruiting foreigners — a state priority
Serhiy Korytskyy stated outright that attracting foreign volunteers into the ranks of Ukraine's Defense Forces is currently one of the state's key priorities. "The task is to scale up this work and bring more people into the Ukrainian army who are ready to defend our state alongside Ukrainians," the prime minister noted. Thus, the creation of a center within the National Guard becomes part of a systematic, rather than one-off, policy to expand the personnel potential of the armed forces.
Legislative and financial context
The new center fits into a broader process of improving legislation and the conditions for foreigners who take part in repelling Russian aggression. In particular, in July Ukraine opened the market for supporting foreign volunteers, introducing uniform and transparent rules for companies that recruit motivated fighters into the Defense Forces. In parallel, the state revised the financial incentives for recruitment: payments for foreign volunteers in the army were increased to 300,000 hryvnias, and recruitment companies were tasked with selecting and preparing fighters from abroad. The creation of a center within the National Guard logically complements these measures by adding a state coordinating body at the level of a security structure.
Significance for combat potential
From the perspective of operational command, centralizing the recruitment of foreigners within the National Guard allows procedures to be standardized and the "application — verification — preparation — enrollment" cycle to be accelerated. In conditions where frontline units' needs for personnel remain high, reducing the time spent on administrative procedures directly affects the speed at which brigades are replenished. At the same time, as the government emphasizes, this concerns specifically volunteers who are ready to serve under contract alongside Ukrainian servicemembers.
