Why mobilization in Ukraine is failing

Ukraine has a mobilization reserve of, let's say, 5 million people. Every day it exhausts the reserve and reduces it - deliberately and intentionally! Corruption within the Medical and Social Expert Commission and the Military Medical Commissions allows another thousand (or more) healthy individuals to obtain certificates [of being unfit for military service] for money every day, enabling them to evade military service. Corruption in the migration service and border guard services persists, with hundreds of people leaving (running away, swimming away) every day and never returning.

The state has exempted one and a half (or maybe more) million people from mobilization, classifying them as “critical infrastructure.” We know that most of them work at enterprises that are not critical by any interpretation of this term. These include building materials stores, gambling businesses, retail chains, and football clubs, whose owners managed to “negotiate” through money or connections. How many of these are out of the one and a half million booked? I don't know…

In my “favorite” security police department, which I have already written about, there are 16,000 people. It would have been four brigades, and all of these people are reserved. There are also other departments in the National Police, paramilitary guards for Ukrzaliznytsia, judicial guards, and many other roles within the state itself. Additionally, the aforementioned private businesses are also booked in large numbers.

We are confidently pursuing a course of “economic reservation” (read: legal “payoff” from the army), which will further reduce Ukraine's mobilization reserve. As a state, we are systematically doing everything to ensure that as few people in the country as possible could be mobilized, even theoretically.

At the same time, we are expending enormous energy (and experiencing a significant increase in dismay) by dragging people off the streets one by one. This is simply inefficient. It is even more ineffective given that the state, by discussing “economic reservation” and its ineffective fight against corruption, is actually pushing potential mobilized fighters not to prepare for combat, but to look for “a way out.”

The message from the state that “you don’t have to go to the army if you can pay” is simply not being stated overtly.

The state must show—now, today, and yesterday—that it is increasing the mobilization reserve, not decreasing it. This requires, first and foremost, the removal of reservations and the punishment of those who pay to avoid service. A clear statement must be made that there will be no economic reservations. Moreover, there needs to be a robust and effective crackdown on corruption wherever the mobilization reserve is compromised for money.

Yes, all of this is a priority. There is no second priority. If we do not fulfill the first one, future historians will study the second priority in the context of other borders of Ukraine on the political map.

And that’s at best. At worst, both the map and the world will do without us.