KYIV, Ukraine — Congress has approved $61 billion in badly needed military aid to Ukraine after months of deadlock, but, in a painful irony, Ukraine may not have enough soldiers to man the new guns and fire the shells.
Although Ukrainians collectively breathed a sigh of relief after the U.S. aid package was approved, the government is struggling to replenish the ranks of its army. The shortage of soldiers is growing while the bigger and better-armed Russian army presses forward with its bloody offensive in the east.
In the heady first days of Russia’s invasion in early 2022, thousands of Ukrainians volunteered to join the armed forces. Lines miles long formed in front of military recruitment offices across the country.
After more than two years of high-intensity fighting that has settled into a bloody stalemate, the initial tidal wave of patriotism has receded.
In December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the General Staff, headed by popular Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, had asked him to mobilize an additional 500,000 troops. That number has since been revised downward, and Mr. Zelenskyy has assured the country that Ukraine “did not need half a million” more soldiers to fight off the Russians.
Yet with the Ukrainian army on its back foot along the country’s sprawling, 600-mile front line and fighters badly in need of rest and replacement, Mr. Zelenskyy signed a bill on April 16 to lower the age of conscription for men from 27 to 25 and provide financial incentives that some analysts say the besieged country can ill afford at the moment.
“As for the individual quantity, the quantity that will be mobilized, I’m not yet ready to say,” the Ukrainian president said.
Ukrainian military recruiters would love to tap a rich lode of potential conscripts: young Ukrainian men who fled the country or were driven into refuge when the war began. Luring them back, trained and ready to fight, is another question.
Of the more than 4 million Ukrainians who fled to other European countries, about 860,000 are men 18 and older, according to estimates by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office.
“There are about half a million Ukrainian men between the ages of 25 to 27 years old; however, some of them are not fit to serve, some have left and some have already joined,” said Oksana Zabolotna, an analyst for the government watchdog group Center for United Actions. “Therefore, I think that this mobilization fund will be increased approximately by 100,000 people. But through our imperfect mobilization system, it is unlikely that more than 50,000 of them will be able to join.”
Days before Mr. Zelenskyy’s announcement, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, passed a bill requiring all men ages 18 to 60 to carry documents showing they have registered with the military and to present them when asked by authorities. The law also requires Ukrainian men living abroad who apply for a service at a consulate to be registered for military service.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he had ordered all consular services to be cut for all military-age men living abroad unless they were returning to Ukraine.
Opposition parties and rights groups said the move was coercive and unworkable.
Oleksandr Pavlichenko, executive director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, told The Associated Press this week that the consular move violated refugee rights and was unlikely to work.
“It’s just an emotional step, not a legal one,” he said. “It will not bring results.”
Social strain
The issue has threatened the remarkable cohesion and resolve in Ukrainian society, which withstood an unexpectedly tough and successful defense against the initial Russian invasion.
Rhetoric toward “draft dodgers” has steadily hardened over the past weeks. The prospect of more aid gushing from the U.S. and other Western nations has made the conscription debate more pointed.
Ukrainian forces are trying to hold back Russia’s spring offensive, which has reclaimed some land that Kyiv took a year ago. Military analysts say the Western military shipments could fuel a Ukrainian offensive later this year, assuming its depleted ranks can be refilled.
“Preparation for a new offensive will require the creation of new structures, which means more people,” Ms. Zabolotna said. “There is also a question of supplying weapons because it doesn’t make much sense to recruit people if it is impossible to arm them.”
Defense officials are using carrots and sticks to draft reinforcements.
Billboards touting military service and patriotism, with QR codes for interested recruits, have been erected in Kyiv and other cities, the Reuters news agency reported. Candidates are offered more choice in where and how long they serve and can choose which branch of the service they want to join.
The government has opened 13 recruiting centers across the country since the beginning of the year and hopes to more than double that by the end of the summer. Ukrainian officials say the conscription drive is tougher because all experienced and professional soldiers and sailors are already in the ranks.
“The people who come to defend our country now are not those who chose the military as their career — it’s civilians,” Deputy Defense Minister Natallia Kalmykova told Reuters. “And civilians are used to being able to choose.”
Some in Ukraine are advocating for more radical measures. In mid-March, deputies from Mr. Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People Party submitted a draft law that would allow former convicts and current prisoners to join the armed forces, seemingly taking a page from the Kremlin’s playbook. Unlike in Russia, however, conscription would exclude people convicted of sexual crimes, terrorism and crimes against Ukraine’s national security.
“We’ve seen the desire of the prisoners, and we believe it would be a fair decision to give them the opportunity to serve,” said Deputy Justice Minister Olena Vysotska. “The whole country is in the same situation, and so why wouldn’t the prisoners have the same opportunity? That’s how the first drafts of the law were born.”
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Mr. Zelenskyy has pardoned more than 300 prisoners who wanted to join the armed forces.
“This process, however, was laborious and burdened the president’s office and the president himself,” Ms. Vysotska said. “We understood then that we needed to streamline it and adopt more systemic measures. That is, it cannot be individual acts.”
Even if adopted, the proposal would do little to address Ukraine’s manpower shortage, Ms. Zabolotna said.
“We have about 10 times fewer prisoners than Russia,” she said. “Therefore, this would concern 5,000 people at most, maybe 10,000 people.”
That’s a far cry from the 500,000 soldiers the General Staff requested in December.
In early January, Ukrainian intelligence officials warned that the Kremlin was planning to mobilize up to a half-million more men to fight in Ukraine. The drive did not come to pass, but some say Russian President Vladimir Putin may be emboldened to order another round of conscription after further cementing his power in the recent presidential election.
• Guillaume Ptak can be reached at gptak@washingtontimes.com.
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