Ukraine’s controversial plan to swell military ranks stalls in parliament

The Ukrainian parliament has asked ministers to rework a draft law on mobilisation that could bring half a million more troops into the military, as the Kremlin accused the United States of pressuring Europe to agree to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said recently that the armed forces wanted to mobilise an additional 450,000-500,000 people, as the country prepares to enter its third year of full-scale war with Russia’s invasion force.

Analysts say the Ukrainian military needs more troops to make up for heavy losses in dead and injured, to give long-serving soldiers a break from combat, and to strengthen its ranks to repel attacks from Russia’s larger forces and prepare for another counteroffensive.

However, the pool of willing Ukrainian volunteers for the military has dried up and there are concerns among politicians and society over the coercive power of proposals that could lower the conscription age from 27 to 25 and tighten punishments for draft dodgers.

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Meanwhile, Russia has a much larger general population to draw from – about 140 million compared with Ukraine’s 40 million – and has sent tens of thousands of convicts to fight. It is also allegedly rounding up undocumented migrants and threatening to deport those who refuse to join the army, and the Kremlin last week issued a decree to provide fast-track Russian citizenship to foreigners who sign up.

“We understand the request of the military command and are ready to meet it. But not all (proposed) rules can be supported. Some provisions directly violate human rights, some are not ideally formulated. This was said openly to the military command,” said David Arakhamia, the parliamentary head of Mr Zelenskiy’s ruling Servant of the People party. “The Bill is being returned to [government],” he added.

During a visit to Estonia on Thursday, Mr Zelenskiy said: “At the beginning of the war, various people left Ukraine – women and men of different ages, and children. And this is understandable, because this is a war, and no one knew what would happen tomorrow.

“But the Ukrainian lads have been fighting for two years now, and managed to recapture 50 per cent of the territory that the enemy occupied. And at this time there were and are people who illegally crossed the border. And this is a question for these people, for men of mobilisation age – because they should help Ukraine, and they should be in Ukraine.”

Heavy fighting continues in several sectors of the 1,000km front line in eastern Ukraine, and Russia fires missiles and explosive drones at towns and cities nearly every night.

At least 11 people were hurt late on Wednesday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, when two missiles struck the Park Hotel. A Turkish journalist was among the injured. It was the third hotel popular with foreign journalists working in Kharkiv to be hit in recent weeks.

US media reported that the White House would back a move to use some $300 billion (€274 billion) in Russian assets frozen in the western banking system to fund Ukraine.

“They are trying to put pressure on the Europeans,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “This is a very paradoxical situation because the main body of our assets is in Europe and not in America.”

Moscow has threatened to respond to any such move by seizing western business assets still in Russia.