Military Personnel - Conscription - Background
The availability of professionally trained staff with high moral values and professional qualities, who are motivated and able to effectively solve complex military and professional task, is an important factor in ensuring that the Armed Forces are capable of performing the allocated tasks. Upon gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine inherited the second largest armed forces in Europe, having 750,000 troops, most of them conscripts. Reduction of the Armed Forces was conducted according to the indices determined by the Law of Ukraine “On the numerical strength of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for 2007”. The reduction totalled 21,000 personnel, including 13,000 Service personnel. At the end of 2007, the total strength of the Armed Forces was 200,000 personnel, including 152,000 Service personnel.
Conscription was enshrined in Article 65 of the 1996 Constitution and was further regulated by the 1999 Law on Military Duty and Military Service. All men between the ages of 18 and 25 were liable for military service. Reservist obligations applied up to the age of 40, and up to the age of 60 for officers. Other sources place the reserve obligation at five years after active duty. The length of military service initially was 18 months, 24 months in the navy, and 12 months for those who have completed higher education. The Ministry of Defence announced that the length of service will be reduced to 12 months in 2005, but by 2014 it seemed it remained 18 months.
One of the most welcomed promises during the Yushchenko administration was an end to military conscription. However, the promise did not become reality under Yushchenko, and by 2010 the Yanukovych presidency made clear the issue was on the back burner until 2015. On Nov. 18, 2010, Colonel-General Hryhoriy Pedchenko, Chief of General Staff and Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine told a briefing in Kyiv the Ukrainian army would be fully contract no earlier than 2015. He went on to describe the current situation in which 51 percent of privates and non-commissioned officers are under contract with that number planned to increase to 70 percent by 2015. Pedchenko added that the General Staff is planning to increase the strength of ordinary troops, petty officers and noncommissioned officers employed under contract by 20,000 to 69,000 before the end of 2015.
The non-governmental Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS) published in April 2012 a defense policy report that examined a yet-unreleased Defense Ministry draft proposal for Armed Forces’ reform and development through 2017. The draft reform concept also call for a complete transition from a conscription model to a professional contract-based force by 2017.
In 2012 the ruling Party of Regions promised to cancel conscription to the Armed Forces starting 1 January 2014. This promise is in the party's election program From the Stability to Welfare, intended for parliamentary elections scheduled 28 October 2012.
Ukraine would suspend mandatory conscription in 2013 as a step toward a transition to a fully professional army, the country’s Defense Minister Pavlo Lebedev said on 29 December 2012. “We are facing new formidable tasks next year,” Lebedev said in a New Year’s address to the Armed Forces personnel and veterans. “We will review the composition and the command structure of the Armed Forces, improve the system of military education, and suspend the conscription while making a transition to manning the army solely on a contract basis, as it is done today in the leading countries of the world,” he said.
"Already this year, new large-scale tasks await us. The President of Ukraine identified ways of further reforming and development of the Armed Forces. The Ukrainian army is undergoing fundamental changes, the minister said. - The reduction of the army will soon take place. However, it will not be a total destruction of combat units and units. The reorganization will affect support units, such as military commissariats, educational institutions, and medical institutions of the Ministry of Defense. Instead, the released funds will be directed to improving actual combat training." The last conscription to the Armed Forces of Ukraine was to be held in autumn of 2013. This was informed by first deputy defense minister of Ukraine Olexandr Oliynyk during a press conference held at the House of Government on 04 March 2013. “In accordance with this term the activity in completing the Armed Forces of Ukraine by contract military officers is being held. All the conditions are created for that. In particular, concerning raising of social protection of contract military officers,” Olexandr Oliynyk stressed. The 2013 spring conscription campaign became the last but one before the Ukrainian Armed Force will move from mandatory to contract military service. Although 15,429 young men were summoned to undergo health checks, but only 750 conscripts carried their constitutional duty. However, even this mission seemed to be difficult to accomplish as many draftees face health problems, administrative or criminal prosecution for different offences, lack of basic secondary education, and etc.
The nominal successes for the reform of the Ukrainian armed forces represented by the abolition of conscription (in 2013), and the transition (planned from 2014) to a professional army introduced under President Viktor Yanukovych, and guided by the defence ministry under Pavel Lebedev, were a factor in effectively weakening Ukraine’s defensive potential; the abolition of conscription was not accompanied by the creation of a system of recruitment to professional service which met the new needs of the Ukrainian armed forces. As a result, when Russian troops invaded Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian army was not only poorly trained and equipped; it also had insufficient motivation to defend a state whose government had treated it not as a guarantor of the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but as a financial burden.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine could return military conscription, acting Defense Minister Mykhailo Koval stated 26 April 2014. "The army will be professional - this is the future of the Armed Forces. But now the Armed Forces are not ready for this. Therefore we might have to return 21-23-years-old men for a while, and they will serve the state," he told reporters in Kyiv. According to Koval, the reckless policy of transition to contract service showed its negative sides, in particular, in Crimea. "If there were conscripts there [in military units], then the situation might be different," the minister said. In addition, the minister said the Armed Forces of Ukraine have not created a good base for training and life-support of contract soldiers.
Ukraine's acting President Olexander Turchynov reinstated military conscription to deal with deteriorating security in the east of the country. Turchynov signed the decree on 01 May 2014, the same day pro-Russian militants seized the regional prosecutor’s office in the eastern city of Donetsk. The decree reinstates the draft for non-exempt Ukrainian men between 18 and 25 years old and cites what it describes as "the further aggravation of the socio-politcal situation" in eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as "blatant aggression" by "illegal" armed pro-Russian groups. The move came a day after Turchynov said that his government was "helpless" to quell the growing pro-Russian separatist movement in two eastern regions and could not control its own troops.
The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine took a decision to bring back a regular military service, NSDC Deputy Secretary Mykhailo Koval reported 28 August 2014. "The council decided from the beginning of this autumn to restore conscription to the Armed Forces of Ukraine," he said at a briefing after the NSDC meeting. Koval said that conscript for a regular term won't be involved into the military tasks in the anti-terrorist operation's zone.
On 02 September 2014 President Petro Poroshenko signed a law regulating the procedure for the military recruitment of personnel on contracts and simplifying the conscription procedure. The documents, in particular, regulate legislation in terms of the transition of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to staffing on a contract basis, as well as simplify the procedure and reduce the time required for the conscription of citizens for military service "in the event of a crisis situation endangering Ukraine's national security, the decision to conduct mobilization and (or) the introduction of the legal regime of martial law."
Demobilization of conscripts in Ukraine would be carried out only after reaching durable truce in the eastern parts of the country, President Petro Poroshenko stated in Kharkiv, Ukrinform said 11 October 2014. "It is still impossible to demobilize under the conditions of de facto military operations. As soon as there is a sustainable ceasefire, as soon as the line of defense is built, as soon as our brigades, and it should be in the near future, are deployed in full combat defense order, we will be able to launch the steps on demobilization," the Ukrainian leader said.
The Ukrainian parliament on 15 January 2015 expanded the upper limit of compulsory military draft age for male citizens from 25 to 27 years, with recruits serving in the military for 1.5 years. The draft legislation was supported by 256 Verkhovha Rada lawmakers, with 226 votes necessary for approval. The adopted law stipulates that 'Ukrainian male citizens who are physically qualified for military service, over 18 years old and older, but who have not reached the age of 27, and who have no right for exemption from military service' will be conscripted.
Ukraine’s parliament endorsed a presidential decree on mobilization in 2015 on 15 January 2015. President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree on a new round of military mobilization a day earlier. The fourth mobilization began on January 20, and two more would be held in April and June. If need be, about 104,000 men may be called up to serve in the armed forces. Those eligible for mobilization are primarily reserve servicemen aged from 25 to 60. They are supposed to get a month of training before they actually go to the battlegrounds in eastern Ukraine.
The conditions of mobilization in 2015 deteriorated significantly, and the effectiveness of the state to mobilize military service decreased significantly. State regional and district administration and military commissariat of the General Staff are responsible for the mobilization. But by early 2015 in most regions of Ukraine the President had not appointed the order of 50% of the heads of district and regional administrations. General Staff simply failed to create a system of accounting recruits or of accounting reserve military service. Therefore, in the military enlistment offices all the records are on paper.
Ukraine’s mobilization campaign, the fourth since the armed coup in Kiev brought to power the current government in February 2014, reportedly stalled because potential recruits dodged conscription officials. Hundreds of Ukrainian men chose to flee the country rather than be enrolled. Presidential adviser Yuri Biryukov said January 27, 2015 "Over the past 30 days the state border in Chernivtsi region crossed 17% of total military service area. From unofficial sources that hostels and motels in the border areas of neighboring Romania completely filled by those who evade conscription". But many regions have reported no such problems.
Citizens of Ukraine military of conscription age traveling abroad must show a document issued by a military commissariat. Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak made the statement on 31 January 2015. "All the recruits that were called into the army during mobilization, based on the provisions, should provide the document (issued by a military commissariat -ed.) for traveling abroad. It's like an auxiliary measure to determine the reason for traveling abroad and so on," he said. According to the official, the concept was developed jointly by Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the General Staff.
The military commissioners, appointed by the General Staff, unfortunately were massively infected with corruption and incompetence. Law enforcement agencies began to systematically deal with the military commissar bribery problems that that break mobilization. Mobilization can not answer who and where to call, because in addition to the excessive number of non-combat units, there is no differentiated approach to the quality and selection of personnel. Motivated professional soldiers are forced to fight in some departments with unprofessional and less motivated troops, and even direct military discipline violators who are drunken and rowdy.
Ukraine had placed a great deal of effort in transitioning from an all-conscript military in 2014 to one where some 60% of its combat personnel were professional contract soldiers led by seasoned non-commissioned officers. According to a summary of the US Congressional Research Service conducted in June 2021: "Since 2014, Ukraine has sought to modernize its tanks, armored vehicles and artillery systems”. The Ukrainian army's main asset comes from its soldiers. Most of them enlisted in 2014-2015. So, it's a voluntary act to defend the homeland, which means they are highly motivated and had high morale.
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