Mobilizing Ukraine for a long war

For Ukraine, a smaller nation defending a long frontline, drones and other battlefield innovations have helped offset some of Russia’s numerical advantage. But technology can only go so far. Holding the line, rotating exhausted troops and sustaining combat power over time still depends on mobilizing enough people for a long war.

This challenge is not unique to Ukraine. In a November 2023 interview, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, then commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, argued that Russia had failed to fully capitalize on its manpower advantage because Vladimir Putin feared that a general mobilization could trigger a domestic political crisis, and because Russia lacked the capacity to properly train and equip large numbers of additional troops. Zaluzhnyi also acknowledged a miscalculation of Russia’s threshold for casualties in a war of attrition. “That was my mistake,” he said. “Russia has lost at least 150,000 men. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.”

Ukraine faces a different version of the same problem. Russia can continue absorbing losses on a scale that would be politically destabilizing in many other countries. Ukraine, by contrast, must find ways to sustain mobilization while preserving public trust, combat effectiveness, and social cohesion.

The friction of prolonged war

Mobilization has become significantly more difficult since 2022. In the early phase of the invasion, many Ukrainians volunteered out of an immediate urge to defend their homes and families and retaliate against an aggressor that had launched an unjust war. By 2025, however, expectations had changed. This can be explained by several factors.

Serhii Kuzan, chair of the think tank Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, points out that citizens increasingly are looking for professional structure. They want competent commanders who protect their personnel, roles that match their professional skills and interests, and concrete social guarantees for their families. Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, argues that one issue contributing to Ukraine’s recruitment problems has been uncertainty surrounding the terms of service. This includes not only salaries, but also how much time soldiers are expected to spend on the front line, how rotations are managed, what training they receive, how long their commitment will last, and what will happen to them when they demobilize or leave the service.

This is a natural evolution in a long war. In 2022, national survival triggered a surge of voluntary sacrifice. Today the question is no longer simply whether people are willing to serve their country, but whether the state can provide a framework that feels fair, purposeful, and sustainable.

When troops are treated as a quick fix for crises at the front rather than a finite strategic resource to be carefully managed, the social contract breaks down. This friction is captured by Vasyl Shyshola, an aerial reconnaissance commander in Ukraine’s 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, who warns that fear of bureaucracy now often outweighs fear of the advancing Russian threat. “Potential conscripts are more afraid of the military recruitment office with a folder and pen in hand than of the Russian army getting closer every day,” he said. “No one is even troubled by their successes on the front. This situation frankly scares me.”

His sentiment may be an exaggeration, but it captures a genuine tension. The issue is not that Ukrainians no longer understand the stakes of the war. It is that the social contract around military service has become harder to maintain after years of emotional and physical toll.

The weaponization of disinformation

Russian information operations have compounded Ukraine’s mobilization challenges. Kuzan identifies Kremlin-linked disinformation campaigns as one of the decisive factors affecting mobilization. These campaigns are aimed at undermining trust in territorial recruitment centers, demoralizing the population, increasing distrust of the authorities, and spreading defeatist sentiment.

Ukrainian social media is flooded with videos appearing to show military officers forcefully detaining men in public spaces. These viral clips spread rapidly online, feeding into anxieties of mobilization as arbitrary and coercive. That does not mean every such video is fake. But in an information environment shaped by bots and manipulation, even genuine incidents can be weaponized far beyond their immediate context. According to Kuzan, during just the first weeks of November, roughly 164,000 mentions of mobilization, recruitment centers, and military service appeared online, most of them negative in tone. The result is a corrosive feedback loop: isolated abuses or perceived injustices generate outrage, that outrage is magnified online, and the wider legitimacy of mobilization is weakened.

Kyiv has attempted to counter this, in part through new digital tools. According to Ukrainian member of parliament Oleksandra Ustinova, “Ukraine does face a manpower problem, worsened by Russian propaganda. They spread fear that if you go to war, you’ll die on your first mission.” She points to digital solutions like Reserve Plus and Army Plus, designed to streamline manpower tracking and cut down on administration. Similarly, Kuzan argues that faster, more constructive communication between recruitment officials, opinion leaders, and the military could help blunt some of the disinformation, but also acknowledges that Ukraine will never have enough resources to fully counter Russia’s information offensive.

The frontline need is real

The consequences of these recruitment bottlenecks are visible on the map; according to Kuzan, the situation on sectors of the front where Russian forces are advancing most aggressively is closely linked to limited personnel in the Ukrainian Defense Forces. In some places, he said, Ukrainian positions resemble isolated strongholds held by only a handful of troops, with significant gaps between them.

FPV drones have pushed the lethal zone far beyond the trench line, making rotation, evacuation, and resupply so dangerous that soldiers can remain stuck in forward positions for months.

“The biggest problem is the lack of enough infantry,” said Mykola Melnyk, a former officer with the 47th Mechanized Brigade. Even without going on the offensive, Ukraine still needs infantry to reinforce defensive positions, hold ground, and prevent gaps from opening along the front. As George Barros, director of innovation and open-source tradecraft at the Institute for the Study of War, puts it: “At the end of the day, there will always be a requirement for old-fashioned infantry to occupy and control terrain.”

With infantry positions stretched thin along parts of the front, Russian infiltration groups have at times managed to penetrate far behind the line. In one recent case, a small Russian unit reportedly advanced roughly 20 kilometers past Ukrainian positions on what appeared to be a suicidal mission designed largely to raise Russian flags for propaganda footage. Speaking about this, the head of the presidential office, Kyrylo Budanov wrote, “It is on them that the main burden of this war falls. You can win in the air. You can dominate in technologies. But without control of the ground, it doesn’t matter.”

The scale of the deficit is reflected in numbers. In January, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Ukraine estimates that roughly 200,000 soldiers are absent without official leave, while up to two million citizens were being sought for military service-related violations.

This is the true bottleneck in military terms. It is not only about generating more manpower on paper. building a force with enough operational depth to allow exhausted frontline veterans to recover, in order to prevent entire defensive sectors from depending on overextended infantry with little rest. As Ukrainian analyst Orest Zoh argued, what ultimately determines whether an army can survive a war of attrition is not just mobilization, but the ability to produce trained replacements faster than it absorbs losses.

Fixing that throughput is an internal priority. According to a report from the Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi on March 20, Yevhen Mezhivikin of the General Staff’s doctrine and training directorate said Ukraine is working to concentrate more training inside the country because many foreign instructors are now too detached from the realities of current combat. Roman Kostenko, secretary of parliament’s defense committee, told Ukrainska Pravda that roughly 80 percent of unauthorized absences occur while servicemen are still in training centers.

Furthermore, time is a luxury that the military rarely has; Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote that frontline brigades often have less than two weeks to conduct acclimation training when they receive new soldiers. That helps explain why Ukrainian officials are increasingly focused not just on the quantity of training, but on its relevance and timing.

Kyiv’s response

Ukraine is trying to address this through a mix of tools. On May 1, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a broad package of structural army reforms. The reforms, which are expected to take effect in June, include a shift in how soldiers are paid. Under the new system, compensation will be tied more directly to combat roles, frontline exposure and effectiveness. Non-combat positions will receive a minimum salary of 30,000 hryvnias (583 euros), while soldiers engaged in fighting would earn “several times more.” Ukraine is also trying to limit how long troops remain stuck forward. In April, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi ordered a two-month cap on service in forward positions, citing how drones have transformed frontline combat and logistics.

That may help address one part of the problem, but pay alone is unlikely to fix Ukraine’s deeper mobilization challenge. Andrii Rumyantsev, a soldier with Ukraine's 109th Territorial Defense Brigade, said the salary increase “should have happened much earlier,” adding that “at this point it will no longer solve either the demobilization or mobilization problem.”

To broaden the intake, recruitment now operates through three channels: traditional mobilization, independent recruitment by brigades, and transfers between units. Kuzan notes that voluntary recruitment has become especially important because it allows people to choose units and roles closer to their profession or interests, which can improve both motivation and performance.

Ukraine has also begun widening recruitment beyond the traditional mobilization pool. In 2025, Kyiv introduced new contract programs targeting 18-to-24-year-olds, offering higher pay, benefits and greater ability to choose specific units or specializations. Recruitment campaigns have increasingly emphasized technology-focused roles, including drone operations, reflecting both the changing nature of the battlefield and an effort to make military service more attractive to younger Ukrainians. Many brigades now actively market themselves to recruits in an effort to attract motivated volunteers, and some recruit more successfully than others. Kuzan notes that this internal competition is forcing commanders to improve their treatment of troops: the units that demonstrate high-quality leadership and clear professional roles are winning the race for motivated volunteers.

Ukraine has also introduced newer contract options intended to make service more sustainable. Kuzan points to contracts that can offer a period of deferred mobilization or rotation after completion, as well as programs designed to expand voluntary service and attract recruits into specialized areas. He argues that these reforms have already moved into the implementation phase, but that broader public awareness remains insufficient. In his view, many Ukrainians still do not fully understand the new conditions of service, and that informational gap is itself now part of the mobilization problem.

Mobilization as a test of state capacity

Ultimately, Ukraine’s mobilization crisis is an institutional test. As retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commanding general of US Army Europe, emphasizes, the first priority must be to strengthen the military as an institution through better recruiting, training, equipping, and sustainment. “Families must trust that their sons and daughters will be properly trained, equipped, and led,” he argues. He adds that Ukraine must become a true learning organization, with after-action reviews, knowledge sharing, and institutional learning applied consistently across brigades. Third, senior leadership must reduce disparities between units. “Some brigades are exceptional; others retain outdated, Soviet-style cultures,” Hodges said. “Closing that gap is the responsibility of senior leadership.”

Ukrainian army officer Ivan Halenko said that military education is part of Ukraine’s mobilization challenge. In his view, some institutions were slow to reform and retained Soviet-era management practices long after the start of the full-scale invasion.

Open-source analyst Andrew Perpetua echoes the broader concern: “I think Ukraine struggles a lot with distrust between leaderships and units”. That distrust is echoed in recent criticism from former commanders, who describe micromanagement and a command culture that penalizes honest battlefield feedback.

Drones, fortifications, and tactical adaptation have allowed Ukraine to blunt some of Russia’s manpower advantage. But none of those can remove the need for people. In a long war of attrition, the side that can best train, place and sustain its people will have the advantage. For Ukraine, fixing mobilization may be as important as any new weapon.

David Kirichenko is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank. His work on warfare has been featured in the Atlantic Council, Center for European Policy Analysis, and the Modern Warfare Institute, among many others. He can be found on X @DVKirichenko.