As Ukraine loses ground in the east, the mobilization debate becomes more heated

In Ukraine, men of military age need to register for the draft, and they’re prohibited from leaving the country. However, the government has resisted drafting men who are under the age of 25, a choice that many of Ukraine’s allies have criticized.

Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented on this issue during a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels: “Even with the money, even with the munitions, there have to be people on the front lines to deal with the Russian aggression. Ukraine has a hard decision to make about further mobilization, but these are necessary decisions.”

In recent months, Russian forces have been advancing in eastern Ukraine at the fastest pace since the early days of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Russia and Ukraine are seeing high casualty rates, which is forcing both sides to mobilize more troops to fill their ranks. But Ukraine’s leadership has been unwilling to mobilize younger men, between 18 and 25 years old — despite pressure from its partners like the US. 

Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking through an interpreter, expressed his position on mobilization during an interview with British Sky News: “Frankly, we must save as many lives as possible, and if in European or American offices, there is an idea that we need to do something differently about the draft age, I want to just ask our partners to do their part of the job, and we will deal with our part of the job.”

Zelenskiy, and many in Ukraine, have on the one hand expressed thanks for Western military support, but on the other, have questioned their full commitment.

Olena Tregub is the executive director of the Kyiv-based Independent Anti-Corruption Commission. She said that many Ukrainians believe that the military support has been too slow — they say that Western equipment takes too long to reach the front lines.

“This, of course, affects their recruitment, because we cannot mobilize our young men who are 18 or 25, and we just equip them with rifles and send them to fight Russia, because they will just die,” she explained.

Tregub said that the war’s longevity and its psychological impact has slowed down recruitment. She said that Ukraine is mobilizing about 15,000 to 20,000 new troops each month, which is fewer than in the early days of the full-scale war. And as the war goes on, the fighting force becomes less professional.

“Professional military in Ukraine, people who had experience fighting since 2014, many of them are dead or wounded — and unfortunately, many people don’t even survive a year on the front line just because of how brutal the war is,” she said.

Tregub also pointed to corruption in the mobilization process. She said that there have been cases of people paying bribes to not be drafted, which has led to an uproar in Ukrainian society.

“They say that people who are rich can try to avoid mobilization, and people who don’t have money go to war, and this is not fair,” she said.

Tregub said that all of these issues have a chilling effect on mobilization. She acknowledged that Ukraine needs to fill its ranks, but she said that most Ukrainians don’t believe that expanding the draft to younger people will solve the problem.

“Wars are won and lost by people on the ground, and especially when it comes to infantry, Ukraine does not have enough of them due to deliberate choices that it has made,” she added.

“The evidence is on the battlefield. What we see on the Ukrainian side are units that are often median age in their 40s, and their losses aren’t being replaced fast enough, and these units are not being rotated out enough to rest after some very intense combat operations,” said Ryan Evans, founder of War on the Rocks, a media outlet on strategy, defense and foreign affairs.

In April, Ukraine lowered the mobilization age for combat duty from 27 to 25. There are people in Ukraine who support lowering the draft age to as young as 20. But Evans said that this kind of incremental approach won’t solve the problem.

“There’s a reason why the average age of marine infantry units is in the very early 20s, the most-elite infantry force in the world. Infantry is best fought, and most effectively fought by young people because it is so intensely and physically demanding, and Ukraine doesn’t have that population mobilized in any significant numbers,” Evans said. 

Oleksandra Keudel, a professor at the Kyiv School of Economics, said that one of the main reasons why drafting younger people has been so politically unpopular has to do with demographics: “Due to historically low birth rates in Ukraine, the generation that was born around 2001, so the current [group who are] 18 to 24 years old, more or less, is really the smallest generation on the ground in Ukraine.”

Keudel explained that in part, this is the result of the economic crisis and the uncertainty that followed in the decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse. And since this cohort of men is relatively small, Ukrainians are worried about sending them to the front lines in large numbers.

“There is no way Ukraine can win a positionality war that uses a lot of manpower against Russia. So, Russia has 140 million people; Ukraine has under its current control about 31 million people,” she said.

Instead of focusing on numbers, Keudel believes Ukraine should rely on new technology, quality equipment and creative strategy in order to gain an edge in this war.

Many Ukrainians say that they hope the incoming Trump administration won’t follow through on slowing down shipments of weapons to Ukraine.

Until then, Ukrainians hope they can get as much military aid as possible to stabilize the front line.