The billboard showing an elegant young woman wrapped around a man on a motorcycle, pistol in hand, looks more like a perfume ad than a military campaign.
But the huge poster hanging over Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine has a high-stakes pitch — to recruit more men into a Ukrainian military desperately short of manpower to fight the Russian invasion.
Unlike many countries, Ukraine allows its army brigades to recruit soldiers directly, meaning each military unit can compete for donations and troops using social media and, increasingly, advertising.
Emblazoned with the words “I love the Third Assault Brigade”, the poster in Kharkiv is one of several privately commissioned adverts relying on macho imagery and models to reach its target audience.
“It makes service look sexy,” said Volodymyr Degtyarov, the acting PR head for Ukraine’s Khartiya Brigade.
“No other brigade has ever done anything that brave in terms of outreach,” the 44-year-old …