Mobilisation ,peacemaking, and deterrence in Ukraine. Does Ukraine have mobilization?
What is happening?
As Russian troops slowly advance in Ukraine’s east, and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump prepares to try his hand at conflict resolution, the need to reform Ukraine’s struggling mobilisation system has become a top-tier issue for Kyiv. Mobilisation challenges that have hampered Ukraine’s effort to repel invading Russian troops could also have important implications for the peacemaking push that Trump has promised when he takes office on 20 January 2025. That is because any credible deal short of a complete capitulation to Moscow will need to provide Ukraine the means to deter a renewed Russian attack for the foreseeable future. With Western powers unlikely to offer NATO-style defence guarantees, Kyiv’s best hope for a secure future lies in a capable military, which will in turn require a reliable system to mobilise and train troops.
In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s all-out invasion, Ukraine had little difficulty finding troops to defend the country. On 24 February 2022 – the same day that Russian troops poured into Ukraine – Kyiv introduced martial law and announced a general mobilisation. Together with other measures, these actions blocked nearly all men aged eighteen to 60 from travelling abroad. Beyond that, the government initially relied on three overlapping systems to fill military ranks. First, it welcomed men and women who volunteered, capitalising on a groundswell of popular support for resistance efforts. Some of these volunteers brought their own equipment and even organised their own training. Secondly, the pre-existing mobilisation framework allowed the army to call up men between ages of 27 and 60, with those who had previous military experience first in line. Thirdly, men under the age of 27 were subject to mandatory twelve-month military service, which they tended to fill by performing rear-guard functions.
It was not a sustainable system, however. By late 2023, the stream of volunteers had dried up. The government was overly reliant on volunteers and now realised that it had to take urgent measures to replenish the troops. It found it had very limited tools to gauge who was still available for mobilisation, making it difficult to plan for training, equipping and war-fighting. Ukraine’s last census was undertaken in 2001. Comprehensive population data was therefore outdated and distorted, in part because the country had undergone a decade of war and displacement. The army also had very little information on the people already in its ranks, including their numbers, identities and capabilities.
High rates of Ukrainian casualties feed a vicious cycle, whereby new recruits are rushed through inadequate training.
High casualties have exacerbated all these problems. The UA Losses Project, an open data site that counts confirmed deaths but omits missing soldiers, tallied some 66,600 dead Ukrainian soldiers as of mid-December 2024. High rates of Ukrainian casualties feed a vicious cycle, whereby new recruits are rushed through inadequate training, resulting in more losses and an even higher demand for their swift replacement with fresh, hastily deployed conscripts.
Against this backdrop, the government launched a reform program in late 2023, with the main goals of widening the conscript pool, getting a more accurate count of the people eligible for service and assessing the fitness of those eligible. Changes are now under way. Prominent among them, in April 2024 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law to reduce the age threshold for mobilisation from 27 to 25. This added some 150,000-160,000 to the pool of available men, a former defence ministry official told Crisis Group. The same month, Ukraine adopted legislation obliging men aged 25 to 60 to register their contact details and whereabouts within two months. By the deadline in July, these changes had led some 4.7 million men to register with enlistment offices and through an app called Reserve+.
The reforms also replaced the old requirement for twelve months of military service for men under the age of 27 with a basic military training course: five months long in peacetime and three months when the country is under martial law. Starting in 2025, all men who have not already completed compulsory service will have to take this course before they turn 25, while women can sign up for the course if they choose. The hope is to give future conscripts basic training before they reach mobilisation age so that if they are called up their combat training will not have to start from scratch. In May 2024, Ukrainian authorities also allowed some categories of incarcerated persons to join the army, expanding the pool of potential conscripts by another 15,000-20,000 people.
Have the recent mobilisation reforms succeeded?
The changes have boosted numbers and made clearer who is available for mobilisation. The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, estimates that after deducting men already in the army, abroad or exempted, some 3.7 million potential conscripts remain. The defence ministry has stated that this identified pool of potential conscripts is more than sufficient for its needs, without specifying what those are.
But as a practical matter addressing those needs from this pool has proven difficult. Immediately following the changes, the army saw a “positive trend”, with conscription numbers doubling after April to about 30,000 per month. But those rates did not last, and optimism faded as summer turned to autumn. In October the head of the parliamentary defence committee said the army hoped to enlist another 200,000 new recruits by the end of 2024. But by then, it was clear that the goal was unattainable. That same month, the head of the armed forces’ training department said the number of newly mobilised troops in training each month had fallen back to 20,000. These numbers prompted the U.S. to push Ukraine to further lower the conscription age in November, something it has repeatedly requested but Ukraine remains unwilling to do.
The April 2024 legislation involved tough compromises that fixed some problems but left some key ones unaddressed. In the latter category, while the armed forces can now cast their nets wider for new recruits, there remains no clear path to discharge long-serving soldiers. This means exhausted soldiers have to remain in the force indefinitely and those contemplating service think twice before entering an open-ended commitment. Lawmakers omitted demobilisation provisions from the April law at the army’s request. The military feared a rule change would prompt an exodus of experienced soldiers and that a debate over the topic would delay needed reform. While the Verkhovna Rada hoped to deal with the issue in separate legislation, no such law has yet been introduced in parliament – although the defence ministry says it is working on a draft. Meanwhile, the parliamentary defence committee is focused on at least improving troop rotation protocols and ensuring frontline units get rest periods and stints off the front lines to enable them to spend some time at home.
[An] unaddressed issue is that the army still has only a very sketchy idea of who is already in its ranks, where soldiers are deployed and how combat-ready they are.
Another unaddressed issue is that the army still has only a very sketchy idea of who is already in its ranks, where soldiers are deployed and how combat-ready they are. By some estimates, Ukraine has nearly a million men and women under arms, but only around 30 per cent have seen frontline combat, suggesting that many people who could relieve exhausted frontline troops are already in uniform. The military lacks integrated databases, and official figures often do not reflect the actual number of available soldiers or their fitness for duty. This makes it harder for army planners to effectively allocate personnel. It also makes it harder to replace troops. In some instances, Russia has been able to advance by exploiting chaotic rotations. The Verkhovna Rada is debating legislation that would allow the army to store critical data in a unified data base, but for now the military loses critical information in what one security adviser described to Crisis Group as “digitalised chaos”.
A third issue that the reforms failed to tackle is that mobilisation officers are reportedly often more concerned with meeting quotas than ensuring that the people they bring in can do the job. Critics argue that thousands of service members are unfit even for support roles. They say that military medical commissions often declare people with disabilities fit to serve without accommodating their physical needs, whereas people fit for service can get off the hook with a bribe.
Lastly, the post-April conscription framework fails to exempt people whose absence from civilian jobs could critically undermine the economy. Although draft exemptions have been amended multiple times over the course of the war, the criteria for who is a critically important worker remain vague. Nor have the 2024 reforms sufficiently addressed the inherent corruption risks that occur when employers can exempt some but not all of their workers, as is currently the case. Hints that the system might be changed to exempt top earners – seemingly on the pretext that they are most critical for the economy – have sparked public outrage. In any case, the idea has not made any headway in parliament.
Why are there not more Ukrainians volunteering?
The surge of volunteerism that followed Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion in 2022 has fizzled after three years of brutal warfare and in the absence of a clear path to victory for Ukraine. Volunteers are no doubt dissuaded by fear of death and injury, but that is not all. An employment agency that recruits for the armed forces asked jobseekers what needed to change for them to enlist. Potential recruits – informed by the media and the experiences of friends, family and acquaintances – said the army should get rid of irresponsible commanders, offer better training and institute a transparent system of deployments with guaranteed rest periods. For now, enlisting remains a one-way ticket, with no clear indication of when soldiers may be discharged and, once that happens, whether the state will be able to offer adequate social services for veterans and their families.
The military has been trying to revive volunteer recruitment by allowing individuals who sign up of their own free will more choice over their roles and units, but things have not gone fully to plan. For example, even before the reforms, the Ukrainian military hoped to attract volunteers by offering roles that matched their skills and allowing them to choose their units. The defence ministry, however, acknowledges that soldiers are sometimes redeployed from their chosen positions as staffing needs shift. Such redeployments now seem to be more the rule than the exception. In a recent interview, the commander of a famed brigade with its own recruitment system said that only one in five of the volunteers it accepted actually ended up in its ranks, with the rest reassigned by central mobilisation authorities.
The Ukrainian army is also not doing enough to recruit women. Female personnel now make up perhaps 7 per cent of the armed forces. Some 4,000 women have frontline roles. While women from a long list of professions in the sciences, telecommunications and health care must register with mobilisation offices, the army can enrol them only if they volunteer. Some women soldiers and activists argue that it does not make sense to exclude half the population from the draft. But the government fears conscripting women would be highly unpopular, and Zelenskyy roundly rejected the idea last year. Women soldiers and veterans have pointed out ways the army could recruit more woman volunteers, including with campaigns targeted at women and policies to make service more attractive. That would require more attention to ensuring properly fitting uniforms and body armour, training for men to tackle sexism in the force, systems to ensure protection from harassment, and basic military training programs to help civilian women assess their aptitude for military life and find a role in the army.
How much of a problem is draft dodging?
Draft dodging has become a growing problem, with dodgers avoiding military service for many of the same reasons that deter volunteers from signing up: besides fear of death and injury, conscripts expect the army will treat them poorly. Men aged 25 to 60 must keep their contact details up to date and undergo a medical examination if called up. In theory, conscripts deemed fit for service then undergo two months of training before deployment. But stories abound of Ukrainian mobilisation teams catching men on the street, or in raids on nightclubs or shopping malls, and bundling them off to the war zone ill prepared and poorly equipped. Stories of conscripts who hide from mobilisation, illegally leave the country or desert their ranks circulate in the media and in private conversations. They are not necessarily stigmatised. As the war drags on, it seems that society is judging those who evade service less severely than before. A series of surveys revealed that the portion of Ukrainians expressing an understanding for draft dodgers grew from one third of the population in early 2024 to nearly half by the summer.
Evaders and deserters deplete Ukraine’s military potential. Parliament estimates that more than 80,000 soldiers have gone absent without leave. One defence official told Crisis Group that the army does not have the resources to catch deserters and hold them accountable. Acknowledging this limitation, parliament passed legislation in November that lets first-time deserters who return to their units go unpunished. People in hiding and conscripts who ignore draft notices are equally hard to catch. In the same vein, Parliament stripped reform legislation of harsh punishments for evasion – such as imprisonment or asset freezing – amid concerns that these measures would be infeasible or politically unpalatable. What remains are fines of up to $600. But while this is more than an average monthly salary in Ukraine, it is unlikely to be a meaningful deterrent, given that tens of thousands of people who hide or flee military service pay between $3,000 and $12,000 for fraudulent exemptions or to traffickers who help them cross the border illegally.
Non-compliance with mobilisation reform legislation... creates problems ... to compile comprehensive information about the military-aged citizenry.
Non-compliance with mobilisation reform legislation – whether or not it rises to the level of draft dodging – also creates problems for Kyiv’s efforts to compile comprehensive information about the military-aged citizenry. While mobilisation authorities have plenty of information on the 4.7 million Ukrainians who complied with April’s law and provided their data, they have only the names and tax identification numbers for the nearly one million people who did not comply. This means that they lack data on these individuals’ whereabouts, qualifications and fitness for service, among other things.
Evaders sometimes have help from government officials with mobilisation responsibilities. In some respects, the government has moved aggressively against those who have reportedly facilitated evasion, in one instance sacking all the regional mobilisation chiefs and in another dissolving a medical commission that illicitly exempted hundreds of state servants. But anti-corruption campaigners criticise such moves, saying they deflect responsibility to mobilisation authorities from the top leadership’s failure to tackle corruption with effective reforms.
What more can Kyiv do to build the army it needs to meet the overlapping goals of security, peace-making and deterrence?
For any outcome of the war short of Ukrainian capitulation and demilitarisation, Kyiv will need a substantial standing army and the capacity to build up rapidly. Such a force will be essential for enabling Ukraine to deter future Russian attacks, which will raise the chance of a ceasefire holding and a peace deal to follow. For Ukraine and its Western partners, this means that when Kyiv and Moscow come to the negotiation table – something that Trump has promised to make happen – one of the key goals will be to preserve Ukraine’s right to maintain a strong army with a professional core that can quickly expand by mobilising from a trained and motivated reserve. This force must also be big enough to maintain adequate personnel on the front while others undergo training in the rear.
The steps Ukraine is taking now must lay the groundwork for this future army. For men and women to join the army voluntarily and for conscripted men to stay in it, Ukraine’s armed forces must become a more attractive employer. Their first priority should be transparent regulations on when soldiers have the right to demobilise and a fair system of rotation, so that frontline stints come with a clear end date.
But none of this will be adequate until Kyiv improves its soldiers’ survivability through better training. So far, its record has been mixed. Too often, mobilised conscripts die or are injured because they or their commander lacked proper training. Bases that host military crash courses are poorly equipped and often rely on the very conscripts they are supposed to train for basic maintenance. Ukrainian opposition politicians told Crisis Group that the state has failed to set aside supplementary funds to house, equip and train new recruits, meaning that if officials want to pay for these costs, they must raid other budget lines. For Kyiv and its Western backers this means they also need to budget more funds for a sustainable training system.
The army must ... standardise training, which now differs widely from unit to unit.
The army must also standardise training, which now differs widely from unit to unit. The most prestigious brigades run their own training centres and continue to attract enough volunteers, even for frontline duty. Ukrainian defence officials told Crisis Group these units draw recruits with their well-equipped training facilities, responsible commanders and ability to guarantee periods of rest. These units market their esprit de corps with social media campaigns, which also rake in donations to pay for training needs. The army as a whole, however, lacks qualified instructors to prepare soldiers for a battlefield that has seen dizzyingly fast developments in the use of drones for reconnaissance and attack, as well as the technology to detect, jam or mislead incoming fire. The defence ministry is working to establish a coordination centre that will collect lessons learned on the battlefield and apply them directly to training programs, with instructors who rotate frequently between frontlines and military bases. But for now, such approaches are hampered by an army leadership that often deems experienced combat commanders too indispensable on the battlefield to let them rotate out.
Finally, if it is to withstand an adversary with far greater resources, Ukraine must employ its people more effectively. By better employing the data it collects on conscripts, the army could help align mobilisation with recruits’ skill sets, ensuring they are assigned to roles they are suited for. Refining mobilisation criteria to protect the civilian economy could also help keep labour shortages in check, particularly in key sectors like the defence industry.
How can Ukraine’s foreign partners help Ukraine raise an army that will deter future aggression?
With U.S. military support likely to dwindle, it will fall to Europe to take over a larger share of responsibility in equipping and training Ukrainian troops so that they are a credible deterrent. Some Western courses, drawing on a decade of experience in training Ukrainian soldiers, can be very useful, especially standalone modules that help soldiers master Western weaponry, battlefield medicine or night operations. Many NATO member states also offer top-tier leadership development programs for non-commissioned officers, such as sergeants, who make critical battlefield decisions. Their leadership is key to the survival rate in their units and plays a crucial role in building public trust that new recruits will be led by responsible field commanders.
But Ukrainian instructors are best placed to train soldiers for the kind of fight that has developed on the Ukrainian battlefield, one with tactics shaped by drone technology and electronic warfare and without the air cover under which NATO armies usually operate. Ukraine’s Western backers can provide a steady flow of air defence interceptors that will reduce the risk of Russia striking training bases and allow the Ukrainian army to train its soldiers for manoeuvre in larger units inside Ukraine. They can also supply other weapons, as they have been doing, but likely with European countries taking on a bigger share (and perhaps purchasing some of these weapons from the U.S.). With enough Western ammunition and weapons at the frontline it will become far more feasible for experienced frontline soldiers to rotate out and pass on their experience to others in the rear.
But among the most important things Ukraine’s backers can do is use their leverage – economic, security and political – to get Russia to the negotiating table and convince it to accept a well-armed Ukraine that continues to receive support from its backers. At present, Russia is highly likely to enter any negotiations demanding sizeable cuts to Ukraine’s standing force and reserve capacity, knowing that such limitations could well cement Ukraine’s current vulnerabilities, including the weaknesses of its mobilisation and training systems, making the country a soft target for future aggression. That would not be a recipe for long-term stability. Indeed, any peace deal that would undermine Ukraine’s self-defence capability could invite further Russian attempts to permanently subdue Ukraine, creating new liabilities for long-term peace and security in the region.
Comments