Kyiv, Ukraine/London, UK
Reuters
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday the military had proposed mobilising 450,000 to 500,000 more Ukrainians into the armed forces in what would mark a dramatic step up of Kyiv’s war with Russia.
The Ukrainian leader told his end-of-year news conference it was a “highly sensitive” issue that the military and government were discussing before sending to parliament.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy holds a press conference, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine,on 19th December, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Alina Smutko
Ukraine has been at war with Russian troops since February 2022. Both sides treat their casualty numbers as a state secret, but US officials estimate that hundreds of thousands have been killed and wounded.
Ukraine’s troop numbers are not known, but it has said in the past it has around a million people under arms. Russia has been expanding its army during the war and said on Tuesday it planned to boost its ranks to 1.5 million service members.
“I said I would need more arguments to support this move. Because first of all, it’s a question of people, secondly, it’s a question of fairness, it’s a question of defence capability, and it’s a question of finances,” Zelenskiy said.
Ukraine, which initially saw tens of thousands of volunteer fighters queuing up to defend their country from Russia’s invasion, is now trying to conscript more men to replace those currently at the front.
There have been discussions behind closed doors for weeks on how to improve the draft process. Some Ukrainians have reacted angrily to social media videos showing draft officers handing out call-up papers at gyms and resorts.
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Meanwhile, in other comments on Tuesday, Zelenskiy said a recent slowdown in prisoner swaps with Moscow was due to unspecified “reasons” on the Russian side, but expressed hope that the swaps could soon resume.
The two sides held a number of prisoner swaps from the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, and into this year. But their intensity slowed in 2023 and the last one took place in early August.
“It has indeed slowed down due to the Russian Federation’s own reasons, but these are very specific reasons. The track will open,” Zelenskiy told a press conference in Kyiv, without citing Russia’s reasons.
He added that Ukraine was currently working on the exchange of “a good enough number of our boys” and expressed hope the swap would be successful.
Last month, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said Russian prisoners in Ukraine had expressed a wish to be exchanged but Moscow was not interested in taking them back. Moscow did not comment on that assertion.
In November, the Ukrainian Government said it had recorded 3,574 Ukrainian military and 763 civilians taken into Russian or Moscow-backed separatists’ captivity since 2014.
That figure included those who have already returned to Ukraine, it said, but likely did not reflect all the current prisoners.
Kyiv has already brought back 2,598 people from Russian captivity during 48 swaps, according to the Ukrainian military.
– With reporting by MAX HUNDER and OLENA HARMASH
