On March 29, 2023, a man named Oleksii O. Honcharenko registered a request on the website of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, where citizens can start signature collection campaigns or support those of others. Honcharenko demanded that soldiers with more than 18 months of service at the front be permanently demobilized. In just two weeks, their petition managed to exceed the 25,000 supports necessary for it to be taken into account. Last Wednesday, almost 22 months later, Zelensky reported that he had ordered the cabinet of ministers to develop a bill “to improve the mechanisms of rotation of military personnel and their release from military service.”
Last April, the Ukrainian Parliament approved the new mobilization law to increase the number of troops available to resist the Russian invasion. Those who advocated leaving the front then received the first bucket of cold water. Contrary to what had been announced, the new rule did not include any provision to establish the rotation periods and re-entry into civilian life for combatants.
Demobilization has thus become a pressing need for veteran soldiers who have spent two or even three years fighting against Russian troops, often on the front line of infantry. Also in a controversial debate whose last chapter has been the announcement of a new postponement of the ongoing bill that has angered those who defend the departure from the army for thousands of physically and, above all, psychologically exhausted soldiers.
But this problem does not have an easy solution because the large-scale invasion of Russia is at a particularly harsh point and there is no stable rotation. “The priority now is to defend the country because we see that the enemy is increasing the number of troops,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov recently warned.
The Ukrainian army has 980,000 troops and is one of the largest in Europe, Zelensky revealed during an interview with the podcaster American Lex Fridman at the beginning of the year. But precisely that of Russia, which besieges the Ukrainian borders, is even greater.
Ivona Kostina is co-founder and president of the Veteran Hub, one of the many associations created to assist veterans and work on policies that benefit them. From his point of view, the Ukrainian army has a specialization problem, in addition to a lack of personnel. “The majority of our trained soldiers were veterans in early 2022 who joined from the operational reserve. The rest were civilians who had no prior training or experience. Three years of combat experience have turned some civilians into professional soldiers, but it is not nearly enough people,” he analyzes during an interview in his association office, located in the central Podil neighborhood of kyiv.
kyiv’s central railway station is packed. In the transfer of passengers there are many, as usual, adult men in military uniforms who are going home on leave or returning to their posts. In a coffee kiosk outside, soldier Vasil Velgan fights the cold with a piping hot espresso in a cardboard cup. He smiles when asked about demobilization, but it is a smile of defeat that his words corroborate. “I want to return to normal life, but it is impossible now, we have no way to ask for it, there is no procedure,” he says. Velgan, in his thirties, has served since March 2022 and spent a long year in the infantry. “After being wounded several times, they changed me and now I am in an engineering unit, but they don’t relieve me,” says the young man, who studied electronics.
Also walking through the station, looking for his platform, is Andrii Mijailov, a driver of wounded evacuation vehicles and a very veteran, because he already served in the army during Soviet times (Ukraine has been independent from the USSR since 1991). He knows well the wear and tear of “the boys,” as he refers to the soldiers. “Demobilization is very necessary because we have many people serving on the front since the first day and they are extremely tired,” he alleges. Pavlov Zharkii, a chemist and enlisted since February 2022, agrees with him. “The Government should create a new structure to organize the army, because now we have many men fighting, but they are not well and they do not send new people to them,” he agrees.
Legislative delay
Given the lack of rotation plans in the April mobilization law, it was the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, Oleksandr Sirski, who proposed regulating this issue in another separate bill. Parliament then urged the Ministry of Defense to prepare it within eight months. This should have been presented on December 18, 2024, but when the deadline passed, such a rule did not exist.
Finally, the first deputy minister of defense, Ivan Havriliuk, assured in the parliamentary session last Friday that the project is drafted, but another three months are needed to develop the implementation mechanisms that will allow replacing the “large number of people who will be demobilized.” , he said, without offering a figure in this regard. Havriliuk emphasized that in order to present the bill it is necessary to create conditions so that its implementation does not lead “to the disappearance of the State of Ukraine.”
With the April mobilization law, Zelensky plans to recruit around 500,000 people, although experts consulted by Morning Express lower the figure to around 300,000. Meanwhile, veterans organizations estimate that some 200,000 military personnel could benefit from demobilization, an option that until now has only been considered for health reasons or in certain cases of caring for sick family members, and does not have to be definitive.
From the figure we must also subtract the 100,000 cases of desertions registered by the Prosecutor’s Office so far during the war. And finally, that Ukraine has lost 43,000 soldiers and 370,000 more have been wounded, although about 50% return to service, as the president acknowledged in a Telegram post last December, in kyiv’s first disclosure of the total number of victims in almost three years. Meanwhile, the Russians have a three-to-one superiority. Broadly speaking, these accounts do not exceed the more than one million active soldiers that Russia has.
The Ukrainian army also has some 2.7 million citizens in reserve, but Kostina warns that their preparation to move into the active force is insufficient. “It is not about emotional preparation, but about training, that people have the equipment and everything they need to join the army. I don’t see a realistic demobilization scenario; “There is no way to free someone without replacing them with capable and qualified human force,” he says.
A mental health issue
As the soldiers interviewed at the kyiv station attest, demobilization is highly desired, mainly because of the damage that being on the front causes to mental health. “Mentally, it’s harder than being there physically,” says ambulance driver Mikhailov. It is a problem of which only the tip of the iceberg is known, they point out at the Veteran Hub, where activity is incessant. All the rooms where legal and psychological assistance is offered are full; The call centers are also at full capacity, even if it is a Saturday. “For psychological assistance we usually have a waiting list,” acknowledges Halina Alomova, communications director, while touring the facilities. At that moment a strong young man enters in civilian clothing, but with military tones. His hands shake when he tells one of the receptionists that he has heard that they offer psychological help there. After a few minutes, a woman introduces herself and leads him to a room where they begin a chat.
Kostina is also the wife of an active soldier since the beginning of the invasion and, therefore, is very aware of the need to demobilize them: “It is very difficult, especially because there are so few people that it becomes more difficult for commanders to allow vacations; They are obliged, but they simply cannot allow it. “My husband didn’t have a vacation last year, and it’s exhausting,” she laments.
Recruit Velgan has been undergoing treatment with psychotherapy and medication for a year. But the damage has already been done. “We lose people every day on the front, it’s not a joke, it’s something very serious. My dream, for example, is to lock myself in an empty apartment for a month, without a phone, and just sleep and do nothing,” he acknowledges before throwing the paper cup into a trash can and heading back to his destination.
