Kiev’s military is not meeting its draft quotas amid high casualty numbers in the fight against Russia, Ukrainian MP Solomia Bobrovskaya has said in an interview.
”We have been lagging behind since September,” the lawmaker from the opposition Golos party told Great Lviv, a news outlet. “The mobilization rate has been on the decline since August, while in May we were meeting the target set by the general staff.”
If current recruitment rates persist, the draft plan through December will not be fulfilled, Bobrovskaya warned. She blamed the senior Ukrainian leadership, including commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky, for the situation. Their decisions have led to heavy losses at the front and the subsequent drop in enrollment, the MP claimed.
In August, Kiev launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, diverting some of its best-equipped and most trained units for the operation. The force failed to make it very far.
Russian troops are currently pushing the Ukrainians in Kursk Region back, having inflicted some 29,600 casualties in the process, according to Moscow. They are also reportedly making significant progress along other parts of the front.
Earlier this year, Kiev overhauled its military service system. Ukrainian officials hoped that the simplification of mandatory conscription and heavier punishments for avoidance would help the army replenish its strength after its failed “counteroffensive” last year.
Ukraine needs to draft 500,000 people, as former military chief Valery Zaluzhny proposed, before being removed from office by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, MP Roman Kostenko argued last week. Meanwhile, lawmaker Mariana Bezuglaya urged this week for a mandatory draft of women to address the manpower shortage.
Moscow has described the ongoing conflict as a US-triggered proxy war against Russia, which Washington intends to wage “to the last Ukrainian.” Multiple US officials and politicians have hailed military aid sent to Kiev as a relatively small cost for harming Russia without costing American lives.