Ukraine’s Parliament Passes a Politically Fraught Mobilization Bill

After months of political wrangling, Ukraine’s Parliament passed a new law on Thursday that aims to replenish the nation’s exhausted and depleted fighting forces, which are struggling to hold back relentless Russian assaults that are expected to intensify into the summer.

The mobilization law is a carefully crafted attempt to expand the size of Ukraine’s military while avoiding a public backlash. It offers a mix of financial incentives for those taking up arms, including a special bonus for soldiers at the front and death benefits for the families of those who fall in battle. It also imposes new penalties on Ukrainian men trying to evade service, like suspending the driver’s licenses of those who fail to register.

But perhaps as important as what was included in the legislation is what was cut — namely a timeline for when conscripts will be demobilized, something that both soldiers and their families had been demanding after more than two years of a brutal war.

The original version of the bill submitted in February included provisions that would have capped mandatory service at 36 months, but they were removed at the request of the military.

The urgent need for fresh troops has been evident since last fall, as Russia stepped up attacks and started grinding a slow and bloody path forward in eastern Ukraine, including by seizing the city of Avdiivka earlier this year.

“Ukraine needs this bill and it needed it much earlier,” Volodymyr Yermolenko, the editor in chief of Ukraine World, an independent news outlet, said in an interview. “It is good we have it now because it will create a more stable and firm legal framework for mobilization.”

It will take a month for the new measures to come into force, and Mr. Yermolenko said it would take more time yet to assess their impact. But, he added, it was “a step in the right direction.”

Petro Burkovsky, the head of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Ukrainian think tank, said he thought that the bill had come late and did not address deeper issues facing Ukraine, like “a detachment between the political leadership and society.”

But, ultimately, he said, President Volodymr Zelensky would be judged by the results, and there was only one result that mattered: whether the war against Russia was won or lost.

Mr. Zelensky had been exceedingly cautious in dealing with the politically fraught topic of mobilization, which has the potential to undermine the social cohesion that has played a critical role in Ukraine’s ability to wage war against a far larger and better-armed enemy.

Mr. Zelensky, who was visiting Lithuania on Thursday, had urged lawmakers to act this week and is widely expected to sign the new legislation soon.

However, the last time Ukraine’s Parliament passed controversial legislation related to mobilization — lowering the draft eligibility age to 25 from 27 last May — Mr. Zelensky waited nearly a year before signing it into law this month.

The bill that passed on Thursday, which addressed mobilization issues more broadly, was overwhelmingly approved. It was supported by 283 lawmakers, and 49 lawmakers from various opposition parties abstained, according to the official roll call.

The bill’s passage comes at a precarious moment for Ukraine, which is struggling to hold the front lines because of ammunition shortages and to protect millions of civilians in the rear because of dwindling air defenses.

Lawmakers passed the bill only hours after the country was rocked by yet another large-scale bombardment of more than 80 missiles and drones, many aimed at Ukraine’s already battered energy infrastructure, officials said. It was the third large-scale assault aimed at the grid since March 22, part of a renewed Russian campaign to collapse the Ukrainian power network.

One energy company, DTEK, said that attacks over the last three weeks had been the most severe of the entire war, destroying around 80 percent of its generating capacity.

In an attack Thursday, the main thermal power plant providing energy for the Kyiv region was completely destroyed, the plant operator, Centrenergo, said. The city of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, was hit by 10 missiles and more than 200,000 people were left without power, officials said.

“If Russia is allowed to continue, if Russian missiles and Shahed drones strike not only Ukraine but also the determination of our partners, it will be a global endorsement of terror,” Mr. Zelensky said in a statement after the attacks.

There were no reported deaths from the overnight strikes, but Ukrainian officials say that hundreds of civilians have been killed and injured in recent weeks as Russia has stepped up bombardments.

One explosion in Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, on Thursday killed four civilians and injured five more people, according to local authorities.

Ukraine is dependent on its allies for the air defense systems that have offered a shield for millions. Mr. Zelensky has also struggled to bolster the armed forces without undermining public support or endangering economic stability.

Much of the new law, which was outlined in part by legislators on social media and interviews with Ukrainian news outlets, appears to be relatively modest and has broad support from across the political spectrum.

For instance, the law creates an additional payment of around $1,800 to soldiers performing combat tasks at the front, which comes on top of their base salary and combat pay.

But the scrapping of the proposed limits on how long conscripted soldiers should serve before being demobilized was quickly criticized by soldiers on social media and by Mr. Zelensky’s political opponents.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of Parliament in the opposition European Solidarity party, said that he refused to vote for the bill because of that omission.

“It was important to include demobilization,” he said in a statement. “And they just threw it out.”

Under martial law, which was imposed soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, conscripts are compelled to serve until the end of hostilities, with notably few exemptions.

Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, had pressed lawmakers to separate the issue of mobilization from demobilization, a development first reported by the Ukrainian daily Ukrainska Pravda this week.

The Ministry of Defense said in a statement that demobilization was excluded from the government bill at General Syrskyi’s request because he “understands the operational situation” and “the threats and risks facing the state.”

Instead, the government will develop a separate bill on rotations and demobilization, but this could take up to eight months, the ministry said.

Some legislators said they had abstained because they felt that Thursday’s bill did not go far enough.

Inna Sovsun, an opposition lawmaker, said she could not vote for the bill because the punishments for evading military service and the bonuses for those who enlisted were both insufficient. She said the failure to address demobilization created “the impression of a one-way ticket and destroys any motivation for new people to join the army.”

The law includes a provision that would allow soldiers to leave the military after captivity; a requirement for men recognized as only “limitedly fit” to be re-examined within 12 months; and mortgage assistance for military personnel who completed a certain period of service.

Another opposition lawmaker, Iryna Friz, said the law allowed recruits who signed contracts to choose their own units and granted additional leave and rewards for soldiers who destroyed or captured enemy weapons or equipment. The families of soldiers who are killed will be sent a one-time payment of 15 million hryvnias, or about $380,000, she said.

While Ukraine’s war effort has been hampered by personnel shortages, Russia has been able to sustain steep losses on the battlefield by recruiting an estimated 30,000 new soldiers to fight in Ukraine every month, according to Ukrainian intelligence officials and Western military analysts.

The British military intelligence agency said in a statement on Wednesday that the Kremlin was seeking to recruit 400,000 people in 2024 to sustain its forces in Ukraine.

Russia’s annual springtime conscription drive is expected to add another 150,000 soldiers between the ages of 18 to 30 to its ranks, although they are less likely to serve in combat roles, the British agency said.

Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.