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Ukraine parliament passes controversial bill to enlist more soldiers
Insights from Suspilne Media, Ukrainska Pravda, and The New York Times
The News
After months of infighting, Ukraine’s parliament voted to pass a new law on mobilization Thursday that Kyiv hopes will make it easier to replenish its forces amid a critical shortage of manpower that has weakened Ukraine’s defenses.
The law includes incentives such as better pay for people to join the armed forces, as well as penalties for draft dodgers and narrower exemptions from military service. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to sign the legislation soon.
Mobilization has been one of the most politically contentious issues in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, with lawmakers proposing more than 4,000 amendments to the draft bill after it was introduced in December last year.
Ukrainian military officials have asked for months asked for hundreds of thousands of additional troops.“No matter how much help we get, how many weapons we have — we lack people,” the commander of Ukraine’s ground troops wrote on Facebook this week.
SIGNALS
Long-serving soldiers won’t be allowed to return home
A highly anticipated provision to allow troops to finish their military service after 36 months was scrapped at the last minute, leaving some troops disappointed that the issue of how they could leave the front without being killed or wounded has yet to be resolved. “This is a disaster,” one Ukrainian officer wrote on Facebook. “You can’t take away the soldiers’ hope that they will return home.” The issue has sparked rare protests in Kyiv, as the families of soldiers who have served since the start of the war have taken to the streets. The provision was cut from the law at the request of the army, which fears that allowing soldiers to leave the frontlines would weaken the country’s defenses, although the armed forces have expressed support for addressing the issue in a separate bill.
Ukraine torn between strengthening its army and saving its young
While Ukraine recently lowered its minimum conscription age to 25, its soldiers have an average age of 43, as Kyiv has sought to shield its young from the war. Ukraine has a shortage of young people because birth rates plummeted in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed and economic crisis set in, The New York Times reported. Men aged 18-27 — “prime fighting age” — belong to the smallest generation in the country’s history, the paper said.
This has made Ukrainian authorities reluctant to mobilize the young, whom officials say will be crucial for rebuilding the country after the war. But having an older army is not without its pitfalls: “Especially in the infantry, people over 35 have less potential to fulfill their mission than younger men,” a Ukrainian military analyst told The Wall Street Journal. “You have to preserve the youth. But our country is fighting for its existence.”
