In order to resist the interference of Kremlin forces and protect its independence, Ukraine needs to abandon the use of Soviet mobilization methods.
Territorial recruitment centers (TRC), despite almost two years of full-scale war with Russia, have not completely lost the birthmarks of the Soviet “military registration and enlistment offices.” After the start of mass inspections at the TCC and the subsequent high-profile dismissals of regional military personnel, a new problem appeared - the mobilization process slowed down. Including for objective reasons, since the combat officers who came to head the recruitment centers needed time to organize the work. In recent weeks, against the backdrop of unsuccessful attempts by the Russians to push through our defenses in the east, the issue of recruiting reinforcements has become especially pressing. Including when forming new brigades. Why and how exactly the process of attracting recruits to the Defense Forces can be changed in Ukraine, read the material from Apostrophe.
NSDC Secretary Alexei Danilov, speaking to foreign journalists, said that in the coming days they would announce a change in approaches to mobilization.
Innovations, he said, would include using commercial recruiting companies to provide more targeted mobilization, including ensuring those mobilized are confident they will be doing work that matches civilian skills.
Some people are afraid, afraid to die, afraid to shoot, but this does not mean that they cannot engage in other activities. Now we have a new minister with a new approach (Head of the Ministry of Defense Rustem Umerov. - Apostrophe), - said Alexey Danilov.
It is assumed that the Defense Forces will cooperate with two of the largest Ukrainian recruitment companies, which will look for people who have certain skills but do not want to go to the front. Organizational and explanatory work will be carried out with them so that they do not join the ranks of draft dodgers.
Mobilization will become more flexible, the specialties that are needed will be announced and people will apply for a specific position. For example, we need welders or mechanics,” the NSDC secretary said.
Alexey Danilov noted that now there is a problem of mobilization, but it is not as large-scale as Russian propaganda claims. It is beneficial for the Kremlin to stress that the Ukrainian Defense Forces have no soldiers and have problems with mobilization. There are always problems in life, but they cannot be overestimated, added Alexey Danilov.
“Mr. Danilov, in a certain sense, voiced an “open secret” that has long been discussed among military personnel and experts. People should be recruited into the troops based on their professional and personal inclinations. It is irrational to make a machine gunner out of a programmer, and an artilleryman out of an electronics engineer, if it is better to use him in air defense or electronic warfare, which is logical... without delving into what a person is inclined to do and what he is not. Even if you die, pay off your “debt to the Motherland”—that’s the Soviet approach. If we want to win, we will have to reconsider our approaches, because a small “Soviet army” physically cannot defeat a large “Soviet army” like the Russian one,” military analyst Dmitry Snegirev tells Apostrophe.
Parliament and the government have been talking for several days about the need for legislative changes, including to ensure rotation for those who have been fighting without a break since February 2022. While martial law is in effect, no one can be demobilized. So far, from the words of the chairman of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada, David Arakhamia, it is known that parliamentarians intend to adopt a major bill regulating issues of mobilization and demobilization by the end of the year. Most likely, the changes voiced by Alexey Danilov will be reflected in the specified document.
“It is important to understand that citizens can directly contact the command of a military unit or unit, fill out an application on the National Guard website, for example, that they have decided to volunteer and are ready to sign a contract. As a result, they will receive documents indicating that they are ready to accept service. Then, with these documents, you will still have to go to the TCC, where the citizen is registered. And in the TCC, according to the law, they can agree, or they can say no, and, accordingly, mobilize according to the standard procedure. In legislative changes, this point will also have to be taken into account if we really want to recruit people motivated to serve in their chosen field,” military expert Ivan Stupak tells Apostrophe.
It is unknown what private structures the Ministry of Defense will interact with, but a number of personnel services are already publishing vacancies from the military, including the Lobby X and Work.ua platforms, where candidates for service are sought for the 12th Azov Special Forces Brigade of the National Guard.
“The command of individual military units, seeing what was happening in the TCC, for several more months began to look for alternative ways to replenish their ranks. This should include, for example, the “Offensive Guard” and more. In general, according to paragraph 5 of Article 22 of the Law of Ukraine “On mobilization preparation and mobilization,” commanders of military units have the right to mobilize citizens without the participation of the TCC, but this has not yet been widely practiced. It is possible that such a norm was taken into account in case of force majeure during wartime, when “standard” mechanisms physically cannot work,” added Dmitry Snegirev.
The services of recruiting campaigns and reform of the mobilization process in the Ministry of Defense and other departments involved in meeting the needs of the military did not come from the “good life.” As government officials admit, after the dismissal of the heads of regional TCCs and the appointment of military officers in their place, mobilization plans are being implemented even worse.
As Roman Kostenko, Secretary of the Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence of the Verkhovna Rada, told reporters, mobilization work is not easy for those who already have combat experience, since the skills acquired on the battlefield do not quite correlate with the skills necessary to ensure conscription service.
“Mobilization work is a completely different job. This is not fighting, this is not training fighters. This is interaction with local authorities, this is interaction with law enforcement agencies, this is interaction with all enterprises, both private and state-owned,” the parliamentarian noted.
According to Roman Kostenko, it follows that front-line officers in the positions of heads of the TCC spend more time to understand the essence of the work of recruiting mobilized people.
“And even if the brigade commander is the best, it’s very difficult for me to imagine that it will take him less than six months to understand how he needs to work,” Roman Kostenko emphasized, adding that, in addition, newly appointed “military” people are simply afraid of making a mistake . in a new place.
The new heads of regional TCCs are afraid of remaining extreme or being exposed in corruption scandals. The former regional “military commissariat”, by a strong-willed decision of Bankova, were removed from their positions in August of this year, after the public, from the first months of the open invasion, was rocked by scandals regarding the illegal actions of the “military commissariat” employees: pressure on conscripts, issuance of subpoenas followed by extortion of bribes, “ protection schemes for draft dodgers and similar illegal actions that undermine political stability and the trust of Western partners.
At the same time, as military experts insist, simply dismissing the leadership of the regional TCCs together, declaring everyone corrupt, was not the best solution.
“Trying to restore order with the regional TCCs, it turned out that they threw out the baby with the bathwater. We still need to figure out who exactly gave the country’s leadership such a healthy idea to remove all regional military personnel from their posts. There are three options for what happened: out of stupidity, or simply out of ignorance, they did this, or it was a deliberate sabotage in order to disrupt the mobilization process, because people in the positions of regional “military personnel” grow over the years, delving into all the nuances of the mobilization process. Yes, we saw all these villas, expensive cars, huge sums of cash, but each situation should have been dealt with separately, and not released in batches and covering everyone with the same paint,” military expert, reserve colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Roman Svitan tells Apostrophe.
According to him, now an option for a partial solution to the problem could be the appointment of those officers who previously served as deputies or first deputies of regional military commissars to the positions of heads of regional military commissions.
If you believe the scandalous people's deputy from the Servant of the People Maryana Bezugla, the military leadership insists that about 20 thousand new mobilized people should be convened throughout the country within a month. Every month, Russians put approximately the same number under arms in the occupation army.
But even such rates and volumes of mobilization, insisted by the participants in the hostilities themselves, are a critical minimum. Former company commander of the Aidar battalion, Yevgeny Diky, insists that about 500 thousand people should be mobilized into the Ukrainian Defense Forces during the first half of next year and about 1 million more should be kept in a prepared mobilization reserve. Such volumes of mobilization should be enough to ensure rotation for those who have not left the front for almost two years, as well as to preserve offensive potential. By the way, the idea of demobilizing the military for 18 or 36 months of continuous service is being discussed in parliament, but so far this is at the level of discussion and there is no final decision on this matter.
How reform of the mobilization process, attracting private campaigns, and offering additional bonuses to potential recruits will help cope with such volumes will be seen for several months.
