Ukraine’s mobilization campaign is a failure – ex-president

Recruits arriving at the front are poorly motivated, leading to a high rate of desertion, Petr Poroshenko has said

Kiev’s mobilization campaign is failing as conscripts who have been forcibly drafted have low morale and often desert, former Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko has said.

In an interview on Espresso TV channel on Monday, Poroshenko, who was in office from 2014 to 2019, when Ukraine was trying to quell a popular uprising in Donbass following a Western-backed coup in Kiev, criticized the government of Vladimir Zelensky for what he called a botched mobilization drive.

“Take a look at the statistics. How many deserters do we have? Tens of thousands. Why are we forcing people into minibuses and sending them to the front line, who come to the brigades and then flee? In these conditions, we must admit that this idea is discredited and ineffective,” Poroshenko said.

Zelensky could rectify the crisis and increase overall motivation by introducing a demobilization process, guaranteeing draftees’ rights and keeping those qualified from taking part in assaults, where the risk of dying is the highest, according to the former president.

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Ukraine cracking down on draft evasion

During his tenure, however, Poroshenko also oversaw several waves of partial mobilization to man the front line in Donbass, calling up tens of thousands of people. However, due to the limited scope of the conflict then, Kiev later began to rely more heavily on contract soldiers and conducted several rounds of demobilization.

Bloomberg reported earlier this month that since the conflict escalated in February 2022, Ukrainian authorities have opened some 96,000 criminal cases related to military personnel leaving their assigned positions. According to the Opendatabot monitoring agency, there were nearly 20,000 cases related to desertion in the first nine months of 2024 alone, nearly four times more than in the same period last year.

Ukraine announced general mobilization after the start of full-scale hostilities, barring most men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. The campaign has been marred by widespread bribery and draft dodging. This spring, Kiev also lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, while tightening the rules. Despite these efforts, Ukrainian commanders still report significant manpower shortages, leading to long rotation times and battle fatigue.