It was August 30, 2023, when President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the results of an audit of the 24 military authorities in Ukraine. The corruption was so pervasive that Zelensky fired the heads of all 24 offices and ordered a reshuffle.
But the consequences were different than hoped. The already difficult enlistments in the second year of the war fell sharply. “You can also say that the mobilization has collapsed,” said veteran officer Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee, in the information service NV. Also General Valeriy Salushnyi, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, admitted on December 18ththat the mobilization is stalling. Salushnyi called not only to increase mobilization, but also to return to the previous, functioning approach in the military offices.
Ukraine has a million soldiers – at least on paper
According to front-line commanders, missing soldiers are Ukraine’s biggest problem, along with the increasingly threatening shortage of artillery shells and military technology. According to Defense Minister Rustem Umyerov, Ukraine has a million men under arms 800,000 in the armed forces – at least on paper. In reality, many posts remain unfilled and soldiers have had to stay at the front since the beginning of the Russian attack.
In order to plug the gaps, replace more than 150,000 fallen and wounded soldiers and finally allow long-term fighters to recover from the fight, Saluschnyi and the General Staff asked the President – apparently at a meeting on November 24th – for 450,000 to 500,000 in 2024 to move in a new man. Of course, this is a huge number, says Zelenskiy on Tuesday at its annual press conference. “I said that I needed more arguments to support this direction.”
Anyone who wants to volunteer has usually done so long ago
But it’s not just the military, parliamentarians and analysts are also calling for mass mobilization. “We need 300,000” men, he said Ex-military man Pawel Latitschuk. The Defense Ministry recently contracted with a staffing agency to recruit more volunteers for the armed forces, but no one expects this to solve the problems. Those who wanted to volunteer usually did so in the first six months of the war, said Kyrylo Budanov, head of the GUR military intelligence service, on December 17th. Now I can “mobilization only” secure supplies for the armed forces.
Budanov expressed uncomfortable truths: that “the majority of people” rhetorically claim to be Ukrainian patriots, but are actually not ready to fight for their country. Figures from the EU statistics agency Eurostat caused a stir in Ukraine, according to which 650,000 Ukrainian men of military age between 18 and 60 were in the EU as well as Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
Thousands of Ukrainian men continue to try to leave their country
The World on Sunday quoted figures from the Federal Ministry of the Interior in November that said 221,571 Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 had come to Germany since the invasion. Almost 190,000 are still listed in the central register of foreigners, and there are an estimated 100,000 more unregistered Ukrainians. Thousands of Ukrainian men continue to try to leave the country illegally amid the threat of conscription. Paths lead, for example, over the green border to Poland or Romania.
It hit at the end of November Southgerman newspaper During visits to the front in Ukraine, a number of soldiers who were well past the age of 40. On November 28th, for example, the SZ spoke to three soldiers who were injured and brought to safety after months of service in the heavily contested Avdiivka: the soldier Dima was 32 years old, his comrade Wiktor was 47 years old, Serhii, who was sitting next to them, was even 55 years old – none Exception, but the rule in the Ukrainian army. Ben Wallace, England’s Defense Minister until the end of August and a close partner of Kiev, recently confirmed in the British telegraph, Ukrainian soldiers are on average more than 40 years old.
Anyone in their early 20s cannot be drafted
The reason for this is also the Ukrainian laws. Ukrainians between the ages of 20 and 27 can be drafted for basic military service of up to 18 months, but not for immediate deployment at the front – unless they volunteer. The result is “Ukrainian nonsense,” according to ex-military Latitschuk: Anyone who is in their early 20s and is in the prime of their powers generally cannot be drafted. Only after the age of 27 do any distinctions no longer apply; every man is subject to military service, regardless of whether he has done military service or not.
The Ukrainian military estimated that just by lowering the age limit for full military service from 27 to 25, an additional 140,000 Ukrainians could be mobilized. Parliament approved a corresponding law on May 30th – but President Zelensky has not signed it to date. England’s former defense minister Wallace commented that he understood Zelensky’s desire to “preserve the young for the future”, but that this position could not be maintained given Russia’s numerical superiority.
The Ukrainian parliament is preparing a law that… Leader of the Servant of the People presidential party according to could possibly come to a vote before the end of the year. If accepted, the framework conditions for convenings would become significantly tightened: Tens of thousands of Ukrainians who are trying to avoid the draft by taking a second or third degree could then be mobilized. All men subject to military service would have to provide cell phone numbers and email addresses within a week; Convocation orders could then also be delivered electronically in a legally valid manner. Police and military authorities are allowed to check men everywhere about their military status.
But it is still doubtful whether Zelenskiy, whose popularity is declining, is prepared to take unpopular crackdowns on mobilizations. Fedir Venislavskyi, his representative in parliament, lost his post a few days ago after he apparently favored Zelensky had chatted too openly about the upcoming plans. Zelenskiy also initially rejected the generals’ demand for up to half a million enlistments: First, he wanted to see a “concrete plan” for enlistments, rotations, vacations and dismissals of long-serving soldiers. With such reservations, according to Ukrainian media, Zelenskiy has refused since May to even lower the unrestricted draft age by two years. Parliamentarian Kostenko, on the other hand, called for unpopular tightening of mobilization to be decided immediately because “tomorrow it could be too late.”