A small group of women thought to call off their protest when the sirens sounded. But despite Kiev again coming under missile fire, the protests continued anyway. Antonina brought her three-year-old son Sasha with her.
“My father has not come home, we are waiting for him, I am waiting for my father to come back”, says the boy.
Antonina, who holds a sign that says “Reasonable deadline for demobilization,” says her husband is currently working at a motor unit near Pakmut in eastern Ukraine. He hasn't seen him in five months and tries to explain his absence to Sasha.
“I tell my son that his father is working, he's in the army, he's making money.”
Currently, mobilization periods are unlimited, with no legal limitation. Antonina's husband had volunteered two years before, shortly after the total invasion of Russia. Now 43, he's worked a long time, he tells CNN.
“It is difficult for my husband to endure this period in the field, avoiding all projectiles and doing everything he has to do on the front line,” she adds.
Not far from where the women met, lawmakers debated reforms to Ukraine's mobilization rules inside Kiev's heavily guarded parliament building. Within a few weeks, a new law could be approved, which would pave the way for a significant increase in recruitment numbers.
Antonina and her three-year-old son Sasha take part in a protest in Kiev, Ukraine, demanding a deadline for military mobilization (Daria Tarasova-Markina/CNN via CNN Newssource)
The Ukrainian manpower shortage in the war with Russia is again on the top of the agenda and reflects the changing mood in the country.
Before last year's counterattack, Ukraine was optimistic. “The time has come to take back what is ours,” said a video posted on the Telegram channel of Valery Zalushny, the then commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
There were high expectations that the push back against the Russian invaders, which had successfully begun in the summer of 2022, could resume and be completed by the end of 2023.
But Ukraine was unable to make significant gains because Russian defenses were too difficult to breach and drones dominated the battlefield. By 2023, Russia – a country with three times the population of Ukraine – will increase the number of troops in the occupied territories by almost a third, according to the London-based think tank.
In recent weeks, the news for Kiev has been getting worse. Moscow's forces are advancing in several areas in the east, and commanders announced early Saturday that they had withdrawn from the industrial city of Avdiivka in the country's southeast.
The current feeling is that not only should new players step up, but they should be more.
“One way or another, everyone has to serve, it's our duty to protect our land, our families, our homeland. If you don't want to fight, what kind of citizen are you?”, says a known drone operator. From eastern Ukraine, codenamed “Mac,” he serves in the 92nd Assault Squadron.
Mykola, who commands the Grad rocket launch pad and is currently stationed in the East, is 59 years old, which puts him just one year under the threshold for mobilization.
“All of Ukraine is at war and all men who think they live in Ukraine have to go through this. It's irreversible. People here are tired”, he laments.
Consensus that reforms are needed
Ukrainians have come forward in large numbers since the full-scale invasion of Russia began two years ago. But in the first half of 2022 the long queues seen at recruitment agencies will be a thing of the past. There is a recruitment system to supplement the ranks of volunteers, but the government has long complained that the system is dysfunctional because state officials are unable to enforce mobilization rules.
Volunteers line up outside the city's military registration and enlistment office to join the Territorial Defense Force in Ivano-Frankivsk, western Ukraine, photographed on February 25, 2022 (Yuri Rilchuk/Ukrainform/Future Release/Getty Images via CNN Newssource)
Eligibility to fight starts at age 18 and ends at age 60. In Ukraine, women can serve like men. However, this scheme is only applicable to men aged 27 or above. Among the reforms being debated in Parliament is lowering the minimum age to 25. This number may seem high, but Ukraine's demographics are problematic. With high immigration rates and low birth rates recorded in the 1990s and 2000s, the population distribution shows a sharper contraction in the number of 20-year-olds compared to 30- or 40-year-olds.
A central element of the proposed law provides that all men of fighting age must record data regarding their residence and employment status. The new central database will further inform the pool of potential recruits for the armed forces, ensuring that recruitment is more transparent and more effective.
Failure to comply with the recruitment order can result in severe sanctions, including the suspension of a driver's license or bank account, although officials acknowledge that enforcement measures require attention.
Last week, Ukrainian police admitted that existing tax evasion cases were progressing too slowly through the judiciary. Of the 2,600 cases sanctioned in the last two years, only 550 cases have been adjudicated. “Courts should do more to make people feel that there is no way to avoid punishment for this crime,” said a senior police officer.
On the country's western borders, Ukrainian authorities continue to detain men trying to leave the country illegally. Military law requires all eligible military personnel to remain in Ukraine, although there are exceptions, including single parents with young children or professional athletes.
A Ukrainian soldier from the “Tsunami” brigade carries an artillery shell in the direction of Bakmut during the fighting between Russia and Ukraine in the Donetsk region. (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's State Border Service (SBSU), told CNN that 50,000 Ukrainian citizens were prevented from leaving the border in 2023, although he did not say how many of them were related to the border project.
The SBSU Facebook page regularly posts videos of the arrested men. Many are photographed with inflatable rafts or simple rubber rings caught as they allegedly try to cross the river to Hungary. Other videos show men inside cars, often buried under bags, although one was hidden inside a large box. According to officials, a man was filmed trying to impersonate a woman at the border.
The punishment for such violations can be a fine of up to 8,500 hryvnias (over 200 euros), Demchenko said. Although the identities of all the men have been concealed, at least part of the reason for releasing the videos appears to be to shame those trying to escape.
A discussion of numbers
Despite the focus on reform, a big question remains: How many more soldiers does Ukraine need?
Late last year, differences between President Volodymyr Zelensky and his then-military chief Zaluzhnyi became public when Zaluzhnyi suggested a number the president apparently considered too high.
Although Zaluzhnyi, who was later fired, denied that he had requested 500,000 new troops, the figure became part of the public debate and Zelensky publicly denied it, telling journalists at a press conference that “it's a very serious number. It is”. It is a question of people, justice and security. It is also a financial issue”.
In an op-ed to CNN published two days before his transfer, the top general made his frustrations clear, “focusing on the inability of government agencies in Ukraine to improve the manpower levels of our armed forces without resorting to unpopular measures.”
Former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk believes more mobilization is necessary. “Maybe not half a million, but hundreds of thousands more,” he said, adding that “the strategy has to be based on — what are we going to do rather than, 'Oh, we need more people.'”
Zelensky appears to be considering a firm request for new recruits for his new commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, when he sees a plan for the war by the end of the year.
Publicly, the president continues to rally around the idea of justice.
“It's a question of equity in recruitment,” he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour at the Munich Security Conference. “The main issue is the circulation of people who are very tired on the front line… Mobilization depends on how many people we have on the front line and how much reserve we have.”
The Office of the President considers these to be both changes within the armed forces and an increase in the total number of personnel. According to a Zelensky aide, of the nearly one million Ukrainians mobilized, only 200,000 to 300,000 served on the front lines. The rest, the official pointed out, are “far from the war,” and it will be up to the new head of the army to change this situation before Zelensky returns and increases recruitment.
Zagorodniuk, a former defense minister, acknowledges that reform is necessary within the armed forces, while he is careful to say that he does not think many people are avoiding front-line service.
“The bureaucratic apparatus of the armed forces is a bit overstretched. There are multiple commands, multiple administrative units, etc.,” he explains.
Whatever number Chiserki comes up with, it won't just be the military and social factors that weigh on Zelensky's mind. Paying players is expensive. At a press conference in December, the president said it takes six taxpayers to support one soldier.
Soldiers of the Ukrainian Air Assault Force prepare to fire a 155mm Caesar 8×8 wheeled self-propelled howitzer on the front line at an undisclosed location in southern Ukraine. (Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newssource)
More generally, Ukraine's economy needs to have enough labor to keep functioning.
“Whenever someone is removed from an organization's roster to perform military service, a disruption is created. And according to studies, the economy enters an irreversible decline,” CNN Timofey Milovanov, director, Kyiv School of Economics and former government minister.
According to Milovanov, adding 500,000 additional people would leave the economy far from that point. But with only six million men in the workforce, mobilization is not a lever that any government can pull indefinitely.
In addition to financial considerations, the economist thinks Russia's recent developments in Avdiivka and elsewhere will facilitate mobilization.
“What the family thinks is important,” he concludes. “It's not just a personal decision.”
Once again, the women and families protesting in front of Parliament, some men may soon return home, while others are fighting for justice, as if for the first time.
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