Ukraine is changing how it mobilizes as war with Russia drags on

Ukraine has been locked in a life-or-death struggle with Russia for nearly two years and the cost of war has taken its toll on both countries. However, Ukraine appears poised to change its mobilization practices to sustain the fighting.

According to reporting from The Guardian, changes to Ukrainian mobilization are planned to be announced soon in order to help the country sustain its armed force’s fighting capabilities as the war in Ukraine drags on. 

The reforms will see Ukraine employ commercial recruitment companies so that the government can deploy a more targeted conscription that will focus on matching those drafted into positions that match their skills. 

“Some people are scared, scared to die, scared to shoot, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be involved in other activities,” Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine's Security Council, explained to the Guardian about the reforms. 

“Now we have a new minister with a new approach,” Danilov continued. But what does this mean for the young men and women Ukraine's new conscription reforms will target and why did they need to be implemented?

One of the major issues Ukraine has faced in the nearly two years since Vladimir Putin launched Russia’s invasion of the country has been the growing worries over Ukraine's open-ended military contracts with its troops. 

Reuters reported that nearly 25,000 people signed a petition in autumn to the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky about the issue of open-ended military contracts, asking for a deadline on when troops would be discharged.  

The petition was part of a campaign that saw two protests of 50 to 100 people in Kyiv's main square who hoped to draw attention to the toll the war is taking on a portion of the country’s population struggling through the war. 

“Such protests would have been unthinkable a year ago when national morale soared as Ukraine beat Russian forces back from Kyiv and retook swathes of the northeast and south,” wrote Reuter’s Olena Harmrash and Tom Balmforth. 

Harmarsh and Blamforth noted that under Ukraine's current conscription rules, only men aged 27 to 60 can be mobilized into service. However, the Ukrainian government could be looking to change this stipulation in the coming weeks. 

On November 24th, Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that he ordered Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umierov, Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, and other ministers to develop a new mobilization plan. 

“The systemic plan on this issue will be ready next week,” Zelesnky said while speaking at a press conference with the Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs according to a report from Ukrainska Pravda. 

Oleksiy Danilov had announced earlier on November 24th that the government planned to demobilize conscripts who reached the end of their service, adding that the country needed to find a fair way to recruit for its defensive needs. 

While speaking with The Guardian, Danilov said that Ukraine's “mobilization will become more flexible, those specialties that are required will be announced, and people will be volunteering for a concrete position.”

The Guardian’s Shaun Walker noted in his report that during the first months of the war, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians volunteered for service. But as the fighting wore on, Kyiv turned increasingly to mobilization to fill its military ranks.

More importantly, Walker added, some Ukrainians of conscription age began to find ways to avoid being mobilized. One notable example was a medical certificate scheme in the city of Odessa that exchanged cash for conscription exemptions 

The full details of Ukraine's mobilization plans have yet to be released to the public but it does seem as if the country’s leaders are attempting to strike a balance between doing what’s right for the country’s defense and what’s right for the needs of its citizens. 

“Russia is trying to heat up this issue, saying that we don’t have enough soldiers, that we have problems with mobilization,” Danilov told The Guardian. “There are always problems in life, let’s not overestimate it.”