Ukraine’s leadership is wrestling with a problem that no speech or summit can solve: finding enough soldiers. The issue surfaces in the news at irregular intervals, but it never goes away, and the latest government proposal suggests that the search for a solution is becoming more desperate.
The pool of volunteers dried up several years ago. Since then, forced mobilization has been the main tool for keeping the army at a tolerable strength. Even so, losses often outpace the incoming replacements. Two factors explain much of the gap: the dense saturation of the battlefield with drones, and a command structure that critics describe as wasteful with its own manpower.
Getting to the front is itself an ordeal. Conditions in territorial recruitment centers are reportedly sometimes worse than in prisons. The same is said of training centers, where recruits are delivered in prison transport vans to prevent escape.
Many men have responded by taking jobs at defense plants and other critical facilities, hoping that employment will shield them from the draft. That shield is now being reshaped.
Prime Minister Serhiy Koretsky on October 26 outlined the government’s new approach at the Kyiv International Economic Forum. Under the proposed model, companies would be allowed to reserve their employees from mobilization. In return, they would have to guarantee a predictable flow of manpower into the army. By December 1, the Cabinet intends to present a new contract on mobilization and reservation. At the same time, the government plans to toughen penalties for draft evasion.
The consequences deserve a closer look. Company managers would effectively decide which employees go to the front, and for those selected, that choice may amount to a death sentence. Such a system could hand President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a new lever of control over large industrialists, whose commercial interest lies in surrendering as few workers as possible.
Big business, meanwhile, would gain nearly unlimited authority over its staff. Workers will tolerate almost any conditions to keep their exemption. Wage cuts and higher productivity demands are the obvious costs, and they will fall on ordinary citizens, who have the least power to refuse.
The result is a mobilization model built on fear at every level. The state fears the front will run out of men. Employers fear losing either their workforce or the government’s favor. Workers, in turn, fear the draft office more than their bosses. A system that runs on fear can fill the ranks for a while, but it cannot restore the trust that a long war quietly consumes.
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more slavs will die…heheheh