Russia steps up attacks on Ukrainian draft offices

By Dan Peleschuk

KHARKIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -Russia struck two military recruitment centres in separate drone attacks on Monday, Ukraine's military said, doubling down on a new campaign of strikes Kyiv says is aimed at disrupting military recruitment.

Monday's attacks damaged draft offices in the regional capitals of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia and came a day after a Russian drone struck a recruitment centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk.

Last week, Russian attacks targeted draft offices in Poltava, another regional capital, as well as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih.  

Both strikes on Monday took place in densely populated areas, wounding dozens of civilians and damaging homes and apartment buildings. In Kharkiv, rescue workers sifted through debris as stunned residents recovered.

"This is the tactic our enemy has chosen," Mayor Ihor Terekhov told reporters in front of a badly charred building.

In its daily briefing on Monday, Russia's defence ministry confirmed it had struck an unspecified number of draft offices.

The string of attacks has prompted recruitment centres to disperse some personnel and temporarily suspend work at the locations damaged, ground forces spokesperson Vitaliy Sarantsev told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne.

However, he added that recruitment was still on track. 

Ukraine's resource-strapped military has struggled to fend off a bigger and better-equipped Russian army on the battlefield, where Moscow has made gradual advances across parts of the east in a grinding summer campaign.

Enthusiasm for joining up in Ukraine has also been dampened by reports of corruption as well as poor training and command.

Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council warned on Monday that Russia was also waging an "information campaign" by spreading a bot on messaging platform Telegram that purports to collect information about the location of draft offices.

"This...indicates a coordinated attempt by Russia to destabilize the mobilization process and sow panic among the population," the Center for Countering Disinformation said in a statement.

The recent strikes also follow a string of bombings at recruitment centres and arson attacks on military vehicles earlier this year, which Ukraine's domestic security service has said is Russian sabotage.

(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk, Anna Pruchnicka and Vitalii Hnidyi; Writing by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Sharon Singleton)