The Ukrainian army, which is struggling to find volunteers, has offered to mobilize “between 450,000 and 500,000 people” to continue fighting the Russian invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday, specifying that he has not yet made a decision. The military command “proposed mobilizing between 450,000 and 500,000 people,” he said during a press conference in kyiv, adding that he needed “more arguments to support this idea” because it is a “very delicate matter.”
A mobilization of this caliber would cost Ukraine around 500 billion hryvnias ($13.4 billion), Zelensky said. It would also be necessary to consider whether there would be some kind of rotation of the troops currently on the front line or whether they would be would allow him to go home after almost 22 months of full-scale war.
Statistics from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense say that the Ukrainian army had almost 800,000 soldiers in October. That does not include the National Guard or other units. In total, one million Ukrainians wear uniforms. Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s military to increase troop numbers by nearly 170,000 to a total of 1.32 million.
Russia outguns and outnumbers kyiv’s forces. The front line is around 1,000 kilometers. The Ukrainian counteroffensive crashed into solid Russian defenses. Now, with the arrival of winter, troop movements are being slowed by bad weather, placing greater emphasis on the use of artillery, missiles and drones. Putin said Tuesday that Kremlin forces have taken the lead in Ukraine and are well positioned for next year. Zelensky insisted that Kremlin forces had failed in their efforts to occupy more of Ukraine since their large-scale invasion.
What is indisputable is that after 22 months of a war that is costly in men, the Ukrainian army is having difficulty finding new recruits to go to the front and fight the Russian forces again on the offensive.
“Our units do not have enough personnel. We need young people, under 40 years old, and motivated,” explains Major Oleksander Volkov, commander of a battalion of the 24th mechanized brigade.
On December 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked the military leadership to review the recruitment system.
The head of the Ukrainian Army, Valeri Zaluzhni, advocated this Monday for returning to the old model of military recruitment, and regretted that those who were in charge of this task had been dispensed with when asked about President Zelensky’s decision to dismiss the military responsible .
In an interview with the Ukrainian publication RBK, Zaluzhni stated that “it is not necessary” to intensify the mobilization, “but rather to return to the framework that worked before.”
Regarding the military commissars in charge of recruiting fired by Zelensky this summer, Zaluzhni said: “They were professionals, they knew how to do this, and now they are not there.”
It is the second issue in less than two months on which Zelensky and Zaluzhni show their disagreements in public. The Ukrainian president assured this Tuesday that they maintain a “working” relationship with the head of the army.