In the first days there were just extremely long queues to the volunteer recruitment centers. It looked like that, selecting people and refusing many: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8YTBsbaZ87E
Russia also has no problem with volunteers actually. For various reasons including good money (for Russian provincional standards).
Besides, they're also finally integrating various previously independent ultranationalist militias into regular forces. Right Sector Volunteer Corps are being turned into regular formations. Azov is now a brigade after the creation of new regiments in Kharkiv and Dnipro from the local "Freikorps" RWDS. This is obviously purely volunteer driven efforts as well, in addition to the massive Territorial Defense and such.
There were similar scenes in 2014 specifically for Donbas and Donbas only. That's how so many volunteer battalions sprung up within weeks to accommodate them, in addition to independent militias who didn't even try to join any regular forces, including for the reasons you mentioned (and supplying themselves through crowdfunding, instead of relying on state or even sponsorship by oligarchs).
Ukrainian fighters are mostly enthusiastic volunteers.
The separatists nowadays are mostly conscripts, aged from 18 to over 80 (the elderly go to police style forces).
In the first days there were just extremely long queues to the volunteer recruitment centers. It looked like that, selecting people and refusing many: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8YTBsbaZ87E
Russia also has no problem with volunteers actually. For various reasons including good money (for Russian provincional standards).
Besides, they're also finally integrating various previously independent ultranationalist militias into regular forces. Right Sector Volunteer Corps are being turned into regular formations. Azov is now a brigade after the creation of new regiments in Kharkiv and Dnipro from the local "Freikorps" RWDS. This is obviously purely volunteer driven efforts as well, in addition to the massive Territorial Defense and such.
I'm sure they are stoked to be undersupplied underpaid and under corrupt leadership. I bet they are just seething in order to fight in the donbass.
There were similar scenes in 2014 specifically for Donbas and Donbas only. That's how so many volunteer battalions sprung up within weeks to accommodate them, in addition to independent militias who didn't even try to join any regular forces, including for the reasons you mentioned (and supplying themselves through crowdfunding, instead of relying on state or even sponsorship by oligarchs).
"Late in the evening of March 1, I went with my wife and child to Uzhgorod, on the border with Slovakia. In my naiveté, I also went along because I thought I was not fit for military service. On the temporary certificate that was issued to me as a replacement for my military ID card, it said "unfit in peacetime, limited fitness for military service." When I inquired, I immediately received a summons to the draft board. I was told to call a cab and drive to the enlistment office in the middle of the night. Although I had done nothing illegal - I had neither offered a bribe nor tried to cross the border secretly, I had simply asked - I knew from the way they spoke to me that I would never get out of there."
Excerpt from this (translated with deepl.com). The whole thing is worth a read.