Frag Out! Magazine
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2. MOBILIZATION SYSTEM PROBLEMS During the 2015–2018 reforms, Ukraine's mobilization system was si- gnificantly improved compared to its earlier state—but it was not funda- mentally overhauled, and its expansion reached only the level needed to susta- in a 2021‑era army of about 250,000 personnel, largely contract volunteers. Despite warnings of a full‑scale Russian war, the previous government did not ensure a deep reform and major expan- sion of the mobilization system to meet great‑power conflict challenges. Meanwhile, Ukraine had a sizable re- serve of people who had served in Don- bas over the prior eight years—a moti- vated group ready, if needed, to return to service, which they indeed did in 2022. At the start of Russia's invasion, Ukraine did not lack volunteers, but the mobilization system could not formally summon them at the pace needed to fill reserve formations and replace heavy losses in the Battle of Kyiv. A situation arose in which queues formed of those eager to join the army, and at the Ter- ritorial Completion Centers (hereafter "TCCs") they were told that at that moment there was no possibility of the- ir being called up and that they should wait for contact from the TCC. As long as the mobilization system still had that easily accessible human resource, the enormous flaws of the system rema- ined hidden from Ukrainian society. Even at that stage it was already clear that the system itself could not muster the necessary number of volunteers. There was chaos in the registry of those lia- ble for service, and corruption scandals were already emerging—for example, volunteers being charged fees for the opportunity to join the very units in which they had previously served. Gradually, the pool of volunteers and of people who had served in the mili- tary since 2014 was exhausted. As those reserves dwindled, it became necessary to move to ordinary con- scription, which immediately exposed the system's ineffectiveness. First and foremost, the existing databases pro- ved to be outdated. In prior years no effort had been made to update them. The crisis was deepened by the internal migration of large numbers of people— mainly from the east of the country (which before the war had been more densely populated)—to the west. This created a situation in which many men were physically not in the places whe- re they were registered, at their local Completion Centers. Hence the gro- wing phenomenon known as "busifica- tion," whereby cities and villages were patrolled and random men were roun- ded up from the streets for immediate mobilization. The situation worsened as the capacity for ordinary conscription was exhausted due to the lack of up‑to- ‑date data and the shortage of people within the mobilization system itself. Busification further deepened the vio- lence and corruption in the mobilization system. Society—both civilians and the majority of military personnel— unanimously judged this practice to be humiliating and an affront to personal dignity, which Ukrainian society is par- ticularly sensitive to. The paradox was that only a short time earlier, Ukra- inians had ridiculed similar Russian me- thods of mobilization—only to witness exactly the same scenes a year later in their own cities. Busification creates a vicious circle: the TCCs as institutions become utterly discredited in the eyes of citizens, which in turn breeds ad- ditional reluctance and fear among men of conscription age. They begin to hide accurate information about their place of work and residence from the TCCs (since a visit to update one's records often automatically entails immediate conscription), which reduces the sys- tem's ability to mobilize—and thus fur- ther intensifies busification. A new Mobilization Law and a reform enacted in 2024 brought fresh hope for remedying the situation. The re- form was devised by young specialists from the IT sector, who had previo- usly been involved in digitizing civilian national systems and had moved into the Ministry of Defense once the war began. The essence of the reform was fairly simple: to enable all men liable for service to update their personal data remotely, without having to visit the discredited TCCs—thereby addres- sing the system's core problem. At the same time, a recruitment system was created whereby candidates could sign a contract with a specific unit for a spe- cific role, and choose which unit to join. The idea was to build a new high‑quali- ty service structure that would allow those willing to serve—but unwilling to deal with the corrupt and repres- sive TCC machinery—to join the units they deemed best suited to them. The initial phase of the reform looked pro- www.fragoutmag.com