With parliament blocked, the Ukrainian president has lowered the minimum age for combat deployment. The army urgently needs the fresh forces. They have to fend off new offensives.
While Russia is constantly throwing new waves of soldiers to the front, the Ukrainians have been fighting with thinned ranks for months. The parliament in Kiev was actually supposed to lay the foundations for the mobilization of additional forces. But the law is stuck. Now President Zelenskiy has at least taken action: on Tuesday he decided to lower the minimum age for front-line deployment, create an electronic register and clarify criteria for suitability.
Zelensky’s move comes as a surprise, as he had previously shied away from taking a clear stance on the unpopular issue. The president has repeatedly expressed ambivalence towards the demands of the army leadership. At the end of 2023, they stated that they needed around 500,000 additional men. This would increase the number of Ukrainians under arms to about one and a half million. The fresh forces are intended to replace losses after two years of war, create the opportunity for rotations at the front and, in the medium term, enable the defenders to carry out larger counterattacks again.
The high costs of mobilization
However, the mobilization of so many people is socially explosive: despite all the patriotism, the ranks of those Ukrainians who are enthusiastically joining the army have thinned. In addition to the danger to life, the often harsh conditions and the varying quality of the officers are partly to blame. In addition, it is unclear how the economy would cope with the additional costs running into billions; Kiev is not allowed to use Western aid to finance its military budget.
Not least because of the conflicts over mobilization, Zelensky replaced Commander-in-Chief Valeri Zalushni with his confidant Olexander Sirski in February. This increased the pressure on the president. While he had previously presented himself as a country father who took not only military but also social aspects of mobilization into account, he now had to show his colors.
The new leadership is doing this with a double strategy: On the one hand, Sirski claims that a survey within the armed forces has shown a need for significantly less than half a million men. This is entirely possible, as it was always unclear how Salushni arrived at this number, and within the army many units are spread out in the hinterland. However, Sirski and Selenski do not explain how many additional forces they now need. The vagueness is likely to be as much a result of a political as a military calculation.
On the other hand, Zelensky has signed three laws that can come into force immediately. In the short term, it is important to lower the age from 27 to 25 years at which soldiers can be deployed in combat. The move is controversial because Ukrainians want to preserve the young generation because of their demographic losses. At the same time, the average age in the army is extremely high at 42 years.
Too few soldiers and weapons
According to government statistics from 2022, the group of 25 and 26 year olds includes 467,000 men. However, it is unclear how many of them live abroad and in occupied territories or are already serving in the army. Last fall, Bloomberg cited a military estimate of 140,000 additional troops.
Questions also remain unanswered about other aspects. Some of the laws sat on Selenski’s desk for almost a year until he signed them. The electronic register regulates its introduction, but not the details. The laws are therefore not a substitute for a more comprehensive template for mobilization.
However, this package is so controversial that the parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has not yet been able to bring itself to a second and final vote, despite repeated announcements. The more than 4,200 amendments since the first reading give an idea of the complexity. For example, the question of harsher punishments for those who refuse to serve or the modalities of dismissal from service after a certain period of time remain unresolved. In both cases, military and social maxims collide, as well as different political positions and populist maneuvers.
Furthermore, sending additional forces to the front is not a panacea. Although the shortage of personnel is one of the main problems facing Ukrainians, it is not the only one: Given the dramatic decline in Western arms aid, the public does not know how many men Kiev could adequately equip. Zelensky recently stated that there were several brigades ready that lacked weapons and vehicles.
Threatening breakthroughs by the Russian army
Military experts and many Ukrainian commentators welcome the fact that Zelensky took action anyway. But they complain about the late timing. The need on the front has been acute for months. But now the training will take more time. While Russia has built a system over the last year to compensate for its much greater losses, the Ukrainians are only now doing so under great pressure.
The warnings from Kiev about further setbacks are therefore becoming increasingly severe. “We’re somehow trying to avoid a retreat,” Zelenski said in a recent interview with the Washington Post. But without ammunition, Ukraine’s only option is to shorten the front. Leading officers are also warning of a Russian summer offensive that could bring breakthroughs.
The situation is already unstable: the first line of defense west of Avdiivka fell at the end of March, and the Russians have continued to attack with dozens of armored vehicles ever since, with great losses. They are now using aerial bombs fired from a distance against the large city of Kharkiv, which are causing huge damage. At the same time, the Ukrainians are finally building new, strong defensive positions. In order to hold them, they need more ammunition and soldiers.
