Ukraine Sees Little Hope of Mobilizing 500K Fresh Troops as Western Arms Aid Stalls

Congress has been holding back a $61 billion aid package to Ukraine proposed by President Biden since November, citing the administration’s failure to address the US immigration crisis. Washington has asked its European allies to pick up the slack, but commitments so far in 2024 have failed to reach even a fifth of the proposed US spending.

Ukraine’s plans to mobilize half a million additional troops for the NATO-financed proxy war against Russia via a controversial new mobilization law have little hope of panning out if new Western aid doesn’t arrive, the Financial Times has reported, citing Ukrainian officials, servicemen and polling data.

The controversial draft legislation, expected see a vote in Ukraine’s parliament in late March, has already had over 4,000 amendments tacked onto its first draft, and looks to lower the draft age to 25, commit recruits to three years of service, force eligible men to register via a digital portal, and have working men exempt from service to pay a steep monthly fee.

Men eligible for the draft can also get out of service through a US$520 a month payment (the average monthly wage in Ukraine is about $400), which some lawmakers fear could exacerbate class-based tensions.

“Every penny is needed, but it needs to be part of a wide discussion. There are people who see it will divided society into rich and poor,” parliamentary defense committee head Oleksandr Zavitnevych said of the proposed legislation.

“It may sound counterintuitive, but the scheme is not [designed] to save people from mobilization, but to generate as many financial resources as possible so that we can mobilize troops, lawmaker Dmytro Natulukha of the economic affairs committee told the newspaper. Lawmakers in favor of the levy expect it to generate up to $13.1 billion a year in revenues to help finance the mammoth $20.8 billion mobilization drive, which will be tacked on to a budget deficit reaching $41 billion+ in the current year.

The economic affairs committee estimates that there are about 11.1 million Ukrainian men aged 25-60, but only 3.7 million of them eligible for mobilization, with the rest either already fighting, disabled, fleeing abroad, or deemed critical sector workers.

In the face of the current mobilization scheme, which has included much publicized instances of recruiters and security services grabbing people off the streets and taking them to recruitment offices, businesses and workers are in “dire need of predictability,” said Kiev-based professor Glib Buriak. “One of the reasons people leave their jobs at the moment is due to the failed recruitment campaign,” the academic said. “There are so many questions that are not communicated properly to the population,” among them why the government is looking to recruit civilians with no combat training instead of trained security service personnel and police.

But for those are already serving, a new round of mobilization seems critically important, as troops serve for extended periods without leave. “Two years without a break, without rotation – of course, morale is low and it’s killing motivation,” assault brigade grunt Ilya told the newspaper. “We need either rotation or normal vacations to rest properly,” the fighter, who has had less than a month of leave over the past two years, said.

Fresh polling shows a growing number of Ukrainian men being skeptical of service, with 48 percent saying they’re not ready to fight, compared to 34 percent who said they are.

“We have many people who are willing to do it, but the demotivating factor is this general context – when Ukrainians cease to feel reliable support from the West,” Anton Hrushetsky, a researcher from the Kiev Sociology Institute said, noting that about half of the 90 percent of those believe Ukraine could ‘win’ with Western support now expected Kiev’s ‘partners’ to push it into negotiations with Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced last month that some 31,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed in fighting with Russian forces over the past two years. US intelligence believes the figure is at least double that, while the Russian military estimates Ukraine's casualties (dead and wounded) to have reached over 444,000 troops to date.