Ukraine Needs More Fighters

Ukraine’s top military brass and political leadership are arguing over how best to replenish the ranks of the country’s battered armed forces after almost two years of fighting Russia. One question dominates this debate: if and when active-duty troops will be able to return home.

“Soldiers are tired, physically and mentally,” said Myroslav Borysenko, a former history professor at the prestigious Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv who now serves as an artillery officer in a Marine brigade in southern Ukraine. Speaking to Foreign Policy in Kyiv during a rare, short break from his service, the 49-year-old Borysenko—who volunteered to join the military on the first day of Russia’s invasion in February 2022—said soldiers need to see a path out of the trenches. Currently, he said, they serve with no clear end in sight. Breaks like the one Borysenko enjoyed are a rare luxury that some soldiers have not experienced for more than a year.

As Ukraine enters its third year of war, victory against Russia seems an increasingly distant prospect. Last summer’s failed counteroffensive, combined with stalled Western aid, has put the Ukrainian military on the defensive. While Ukrainian authorities do not publish casualty figures, at least 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have likely died over the past two years, U.S. officials told the New York Times in August 2023.

Now, the need to rotate exhausted troops out of fighting is running up against a growing manpower shortage. Ukraine’s armed forces need more fighters: The country’s General Staff requested 500,000 additional men be mobilized to supplement the already 1.1 million-strong military, President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a press conference on Dec. 19.

Further mobilization is broadly unpopular and has proved politically sensitive. Late last year, the matter was at the heart of the first open disagreement between Zelensky and his then-military chief Valery Zaluzhny, as the Ukrainian president proved reluctant to increase the pace of conscription. “Personally, I don’t see the point in mobilizing half a million people right now,” Zelensky told Britain’s Channel 4 News in an interview published on Jan. 20. Zaluzhny, who had been pushing for more troops, was dismissed on Feb. 8.

As Russia’s invasion began, Ukraine did away with its existing system of compulsory military service, which had required able-bodied men to serve for 12 to 18 months before the age of 27. Conscription unfolded in two annual waves.

Now, all able-bodied men ages 27 to 60 can be enlisted in the Ukrainian military at any point, regardless of their previous military experience. Men receive a summons to report to the local recruitment center, followed by a medical visit and a dispatch to an assigned military unit for training. Anyone over 18 can also elect to join the military, as Borysenko did, but the number of volunteers has decreased sharply since the first months of the war. It has become impossible to sustain the war effort without conscription.

Since late last year, Ukraine’s parliament has been embroiled in fierce debates over planned sweeping changes to the country’s mobilization system. A first bill submitted to parliament on Dec. 25 was withdrawn two weeks later after some provisions—including sanctions against draft dodgers that would have banned them from driving a car or buying a house—drew widespread criticism.

A second bill passed a first reading on Feb. 7, but debate once again emerged over several provisions, including sending summons electronically and allowing the state to freeze the bank accounts of draft dodgers. The new law would also lower the conscription age from 27 to 25 and give increased authority to military recruitment offices.

“It’s the paradox of the situation,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst based in Kyiv. “The majority of Ukrainians are patriotic, but many have this view that the military should be in charge of fighting and that civilians will simply support them,” he told Foreign Policy. “And of course,” he added, “people are afraid.”

The competing imperatives of conscripting more troops while also providing rest to worn-out soldiers are tightly linked. “The lack of a demobilization process makes mobilization even harder,” said Borys Khmilevskiy, a former combat medic who recently joined a team in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry brainstorming ways to upgrade the mobilization process. “For people who have not yet joined the military, the contract with the state currently sounds like, ‘You’re being recruited until you die or get injured really badly,’ and of course it’s not a good contract, so people don’t want to join.”

Last fall, following Ukraine’s unsuccessful summer counteroffensive, the question of if and how to demobilize troops moved to the political forefront.

Beginning in October 2023, small groups of soldiers’ wives and mothers took to the streets of several Ukrainian cities to demand the right for soldiers to demobilize after 18 months of service without the possibility of being enlisted again for another year and a half. The protests have been ongoing, with the latest ones unfolding in more than a dozen Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, on Feb. 11.

“We know it’s not up to us to decide that length, but there needs to be a term of service,” said Anastasia Chuvakina, a 22-year-old dance teacher from Odesa. She told Foreign Policy that her husband has able to visit home only three times, for just a handful of days each, since the start of the Russian invasion.

The absence of any clear demobilization procedure so far has also strained military-civilian relations, with resentment growing among some front-line troops who feel that some men in the rear are actively avoiding conscription.

“I was walking in the streets [in Kyiv], I saw all these fit men in civilian clothes, and I thought, that guy would be great for the airborne troops, that one would be perfect for the Marines,” said Borysenko, the artillery officer. “We’re tired, and we feel like society isn’t ready to properly prepare for this war, doesn’t see that we need to be rotated out.”

Meanwhile, Borysenko said fighting has grown more grueling as front-line troops have had to adapt to an ammunition shortage and technological change. “One year ago, nighttime could be a time for sleeping on the front line, but these past few months, the enemy received drones with thermal and night vision. And it’s changed everything,” he added.

But demobilization is a tough sell for the government when “the shortage [of manpower] is palpable,” Ukrainian military spy chief Kyrylo Budanov told the Financial Times in January. The tens of thousands of soldiers who would leave the army if an official demobilization period were to be declared would need to be replaced by fresh troops—just as Kyiv struggles to find willing people for the job. “I think the bill introducing demobilization will pass,” said Fesenko, the political analyst, “but I don’t think it will be applied in practice, not for now at least.”

Ukrainian authorities, both military and political, have acknowledged front-line troops’ exhaustion but are looking to increase breaks rather than set up a demobilization process. The first meeting between Zaluzhny’s successor, Oleksandr Syrskyi, and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov on Feb. 9 “focused on [setting up] an effective system allowing for troop rotation and rest periods for units,” according to a government press release.

But some argue the reform should still be impactful in the long term. “I think we need to rebuild the entire system—mobilization, demobilization, guarantees and compensations for soldiers and veterans, everything,” Khmilevskiy said. “Because if we want to survive, we need to build a system that can work for decades.”

Correction, Feb. 26, 2024: Myroslav Borysenko is a professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, not at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, as originally stated.