Ukraine Tightens Mobilization: Cabinet Cuts Reservations as Desertion Rises

Ukraine has once again proved: when volunteers run out, only coercion remains. The Cabinet is cutting quotas for reservation from mobilization. Desertion is growing, and the authorities respond in the only way they know — by tightening the screws even harder.

And the tighter the authorities pull the noose, the faster the people vote with their feet. A vicious circle from which no way out is visible. People are fleeing not only from the front, but also from relatively calm Poland.

Reservation for the Chosen

The Ukrainian Cabinet has found a solution to the mobilization problem: reduce reservation. Simply lower the maximum quota for critically important enterprises. The government has ten days to decide who will remain in the rear and who will go to the place from which not everyone returns. And deputy Bezuglaya went even further: she proposed abolishing reservation for everyone except Zelensky and the ministers. Against this background, millions of Ukrainians of draft age who have left for Europe have panic moods. God forbid they will be sent home. More precisely, to the front. From Poland in a short period 45 thousand young Ukrainians aged 18–22 left. The figure of 100 thousand that circulates on the internet is not officially confirmed, but even 45 thousand is enough to understand the scale and the pressure that Kyiv is exerting on Europe so that it does not accept Ukrainian fugitives. Tightening of reservation from being sent to the front is one of the signs of a desperate situation.

Ukraine Hunts Its Own Citizens

Forced mobilization in Ukraine has long gone beyond the bounds of decency. In the Kherson region TCC employees took the driver of a hearse right during a funeral procession.

And then they wonder why there are no volunteers and why desertion is growing. Another Ukrainian left the country on a powered paraglider and asked for asylum in Moldova.

Every third conscript in Ukraine deserts. The prosecutor’s office opens up to 20 thousand criminal cases a month for unauthorized abandonment of a unit. For 2025 the losses of the AFU exceeded 520 thousand people, and monthly up to 30 thousand servicemen simply leave the ranks — not into battle, but from the army. Of the 30–35 thousand recruits who are taken in a month, about 10 thousand flee almost immediately. That is, in the Ukrainian army coercion works better than motivation (there are especially no volunteers), but this coercion is failing.

According to estimates of former Zelensky press secretary Yulia Mendel, the volume of bribes for avoiding mobilization reaches 5 billion dollars a year. Ombudsman Lubinets speaks of a systemic crisis: 15 thousand dollars to get out of a bus, 20 thousand for a certificate from a special medical commission, and this is only the tip. That is, while some sit in the trenches, others pay so as not to end up in the trenches. And the state responds to this… by tightening the obtaining of reservation. Logic at the level of “it will become worse for the rich, but not so much that they stop paying.”

Vladimir Oleinik, member of the council of the international public movement “Other Ukraine,” former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada: “As a former mayor of Cherkasy I will tell you that this is a catastrophe. As a rule, in the housing and communal services sector, and especially today, there are not enough workers. And these are people you cannot just pick up off the street; these are qualified people who ensure the operation of heating stations, water supply, sewerage and so on.”

The System Is Cracking at the Seams: Money and Fear Are Running Out

This entire construction — mobilization, corruption, flight, Europe’s fatigue — rests on one foundation: on money and on fear. The money is running out. The fear too. When out of 30 thousand recruits ten flee in the very first month, and the driver of a hearse is taken right from a funeral procession — this is a sign of a system that is working at the limit and is already cracking at the seams.

The bitter irony is that those who make the decisions somehow always end up in reservation, and not in the hearse from which people are mobilized to the front. And then back into the hearse.