Ukraine Parliament passes controversial law to increase recruits

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s parliament on Thursday approved a controversial law that will govern how the country recruits new soldiers to replenish depleted forces increasingly struggling to fend off Russian troops.

Two years later The full-scale invasion of Russia captured almost a quarter of the country, the risks could not be greater for Kiev. After a series of victories in the first year of the war, fortunes have changed for the Ukrainian military, which is entrenched, outgunned and outnumbered. Troops are plagued by shortages of soldiers and ammunition, as well as doubts about the to supply in Western aid.

Lawmakers have dragged their feet on the new law for months, and it is expected to be unpopular. This comes about a week after Ukraine lowered the eligibility age for men from 27 to 25.

Comparing Russian and Ukrainian forces after two years of war

The law will come into force a month after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signs it, although it is unclear when that will happen. It took months to sign the law that lowers the recruitment age.

It was approved on Thursday in a context of escalating Russian campaign that has devastated Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks. Officials said Russian nighttime missile and drone attacks again targeted infrastructure and energy facilities in several regions and completely destroyed the Trypilska thermal power plant, the largest power generation facility in the Kiev region.

With Russia increasingly taking the initiative, the law came in response to a request from the Ukrainian military, which intends to mobilize an additional 500,000 soldiers, Zelenskyy said in December. The current army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi and Zelenskyy, has since revised that number downward because soldiers can be rotated from the rear. But officials have not said how many are needed.

The law – which has been watered down from its original form – will make it easier to identify all men eligible for conscription in the country, where, even during war, many avoided conscription by avoiding contact with authorities.

But it is unclear whether Ukraine, with its ongoing ammunition shortages, has the capacity to arm large numbers of recruits without a new injection of Western aid.

Earlier this month, Volodymyr Fesenko, an analyst at the Penta Center for Applied Political Studies, said the law is crucial to Ukraine’s ability to maintain momentum fight against Russiaalthough it is painful for Ukrainian society.

“A large part of the population does not want their loved ones to go to the front, but at the same time they want Ukraine to win,” he said.

Thursday’s vote came after the parliamentary defense committee removed a key provision from the bill that would deploy troops who had served 36 months of combat — a key promise from the Ukrainian leadership. Lawmaker Oleksii Honcharenko said in a Telegram post that he was shocked by the move to remove the provision.

The committee instructed the Defense Ministry to draft a separate bill on demobilization within several months, press reports cited ministry spokesman Dmytro Lazutkin.

Exhausted soldiers, on the front line since the Russian invasion in February 2022, have no way to get out to rest. But given the scale and intensity of the war against Russia, it will be difficult to implement a rest system.

Ukraine already suffers from a lack of trained recruits capable of fighting, and the demobilization of soldiers on the front lines would now deprive Ukrainian forces of their most capable fighters.

In nighttime missile and drone strikes, at least 10 strikes damaged energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that more than 200,000 people in the region were without power and that Russia “is trying to destroy Kharkiv’s infrastructure and leave the city in darkness.”

Ukraine’s leaders called for more air defense systems — help that has been slow to arrive.

Four people were killed and five injured in an attack in the city of Mykolaiv on Thursday, regional governor Vitalii Kim said. In the Odesa region, four people were killed and 14 injured in Russian missile attacks on Wednesday night, Governor Oleh Kiper said.

Energy facilities were also hit in the Zaporizhzhia and Lviv regions.