KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on his military to give him a detailed plan before approving a demand to conscript as many as 500,000 soldiers to join the country’s war effort.
“The mobilization of an additional 450,000 to 500,000 people will cost Ukraine 500 billion hryvnia [€12 billion] and I would like to know where the money will come from,” Zelenskyy said during a Tuesday press conference in Kyiv. “Considering that it takes six Ukrainian working civilians paying taxes to pay the salary of one soldier, I would need to get 3 million more working people somewhere to be able to pay for the additional troops.”
Ukraine is under pressure to increase its forces to deal with its bloody war of attrition with Russia, and also to allow exhausted front-line troops to rotate away from the fighting to rest and recuperate.
Zelenskyy said he wants to see a war plan and a project to demobilize those soldiers who have been fighting the Russians for almost two years. Those demands are one of the causes of Zelenskyy’s ongoing rift with Ukraine’s top military commander, Valeriy Zaluzhny.
“As of now, I did not see demobilization in their plan. And that is a No. 1 question, an issue of justice for those fighting at the war front for so long,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian lawmakers and the military are currently working on changes to the existing mobilization bill that includes reducing the conscription age from 27 to 25 and possibly starting to conscript women. Currently, more than 40,000 women serve in the military as volunteers.
However, that’s a line Zelenskyy won’t cross.
“I won’t sign the mandatory mobilization for women. But the decreasing of conscription age — that I will sign,” the president said.
Zelenskyy said it was “very serious” to consider drafting half a million additional people, and added he needed more arguments because “this is a question of people, justice, defense capability, and finances.”
