The Ukrainian parliament has adopted a long-debated law on mobilisation as the country struggles to replenish its forces more than two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Ukraine is in desperate need of new recruits, with the military leadership having estimated that hundreds of thousands of men are needed to replace casualties and servicemen who have been on the front since the war began.
The law comes at a critical point in Ukraine’s defence against Russian forces, which are regaining the initiative on the battlefield with more weaponry and men than Kyiv can muster. Moscow has also intensified its aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities in a bid to overwhelm its rapidly depleting air defences.
The bill includes better pay and longer leave periods but lawmakers failed to agree on setting a hard deadline to the time soldiers spend on the battlefield — a core demand from families of those deployed and a significant factor for potential recruits to shun military service.
“The main question for those serving and those who might be potentially mobilised [is] ‘how long will I serve?’ Without this, I don’t think the law will improve mobilisation,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, an opposition MP from the European Solidarity party.
The law, which lawmakers began drafting last summer, has been politically charged as the leadership in Kyiv shuns a mandatory draft that would alienate the population and derail its war-torn economy. More than 4,000 amendments to the draft bill have been submitted this year.
A first draft had proposed limiting terms to 36 months.
But at the last minute, the term limit was scrapped at the request of Ukraine’s commander-in-chief of the armed forces Oleksandr Syrsky and defence minister Rustem Umerov. A separate law about the terms of service would be adopted soon, the two military chiefs said.
“Syrsky and Umerov are scared of demobilisation. They are worried about losing men with combat experience. But these are people, not machines, they need a break,” said Goncharenko.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s defence ministry, Dmytro Lazutkin, said term limits were scrapped “to avoid a negative impact on the country’s defence capabilities” and that a new piece of legislation would be drafted within eight months.
Military experts agree that term limits are not realistic at this point in the conflict.
“Of course, it would be better to include the terms of service,” said Serhiy Kuzan, chair of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a think-tank. “But in order to demobilise this number of people, we need to be able to provide an equivalent number of people and these people have to be trained and equipped.”
Seemingly frustrated with the slow pace of the parliamentary proceedings, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week signed three separate laws on measures that were set to be included in the bill, including lowering the eligibility age from 27 to 25 in order to widen the pool of recruits.
Zelenskyy criticised MPs for how they handled the law, saying it had allowed Russia to manipulate the west into believing that “Ukrainians are not prepared to continue defending their state”.
“Mobilisation is already ongoing, the laws around it are changing and there are difficulties . . . but we are not preparing to surrender,” said Zelenskyy.
Among the benefits included for servicemen is additional leave for those who destroy Russian equipment and weapons and at least 15 days of annual leave, up from 10 days. Those who have been on the frontline for three months will be rotated out for at least a month. At present, there are no hard rules on frontline rotations.
Soldiers will be exempt from some interest charges and penalties for non-payment of loans, and they will also get one-off payments towards their mortgages, among other bonuses.
The most controversial measure — a proposed economic reserve system where companies or individuals would pay a certain levy to exempt their workers from the draft — was not included in the final law.
Businesses have urged the government for more clarity and predictability but critics, including Kuzan, described some of the proposals as mobilisation for the poor and said the principle of fairness needed to be upheld for societal balance.
Ihor Kopytin, a member of the parliament’s defence committee, said the economic reserve system would be decided by the government, which may or may not bring forward more legislation.
He said the defence committee had done its best to find the right balance for a fair and effective mobilisation system.
The current law has incentive programmes that will encourage men to join voluntarily, including being able to choose where they serve, he said.
“The army needs motivated and determined fighters,” said Kopytin.
An electronic registry will be set up, allowing recruitment centres to ditch their paper systems. This will be key to helping Ukraine understand “what potential mobilisation resource they can count on”, Kopytin said. “We are opposed by a large, well-armed army, and we need to understand how to resist it.”
Men are now obliged to carry their registration document with them and those who fail to register are deemed to be evading military service.
“It’s very difficult to keep the balance. There will never be a law which will satisfy everyone — different sections will suffer, from the army to businesses, in different amounts,” said Kuzan.
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