At 29, Mengli already carries the exhaustion of old age in his flesh. From his twenties, “which should have been the best decade of (his) life”, this young Ukrainian only retains pain. Ten years in exile, far from his native Crimea occupied by Russia since 2014. Two years at war in the trenches of kyiv – his adopted city – then Donbass. Several concussions, ruptured cruciate ligaments, knee cartilage worn to the wire, shoulder trauma from throwing yourself to the ground to avoid shells, loss of almost 80% of hearing in one ear, tinnitus constant in the other. At least the eardrums of this soldier specialized in handling grenade launchers were not torn, unlike those of some of his companions, he puts things into perspective.
Like many Ukrainian recruits, Mengli – whose first name has been changed – is at the end of his rope. In fatigues, in a café located in a dormitory district of kyiv, this soldier from the territorial defense of the capital recounts his new life in one go. We must act quickly. He only had three days of leave to seek treatment in the capital. In two hours, he will return to the Serebriansky forest of which only charred trunks remain, a wood at the heart of the battles in Donbass, where he has been fighting almost without interruption for two years. Alternating: two days on the front line to hold positions; two days a few kilometers at the rear to sleep, eat, wash, breathe… Lately, it’s “a little more” at the front, due to lack of relief. “We need more soldiers… We are dying, we are being killed… We need to be replaced but Ukraine does not have enough soldiers, not enough weapons to equip them,” breathes this Crimean Tatar who has been fighting since February 24, 2022.
A delicate subject for the government
While Russia regains the initiative on the battlefield, against a backdrop of a glaring shortage of weapons on the side of kyiv’s forces, the Ukrainian Parliament has just adopted a new law on mobilization passed in April, emptied of its substance after months of debate and 4,000 amendments. The project, debated and blocked for a long time, was finally adopted urgently, at a time when Ukraine, in difficulty on the front, had to consolidate its defenses. The flagship measure, which lowers the legal minimum age of recruits from 27 to 25, was finally passed by decree due to lack of agreement. At the last moment, the measure providing for the demobilization of soldiers after thirty-six months was deleted from the text, provoking anger and bitterness among combatants and their families.
The government hopes to mobilize up to 300,000 men, with this text as delicate for political power as it is necessary on the front. Even if the subject remains a state secret, injuries and losses are piling up. At the end of February, Volodymyr Zelensky indicated that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had lost their lives since February 24, 2022, a first public announcement, underestimated by at least half according to military experts.
In 2023, kyiv had around 1 million troops according to the Minister of Defense (including some police units, border guards and intelligence). Nearly 300,000 would be deployed directly to the battlefield. Russia, for its part, has 1.2 million, including 500,000 engaged on the Ukrainian front, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Volunteers are becoming rarer
“The problem is that today a soldier can only rest when he is injured or sick,” notes Serhiy Kouzan, a military expert at the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, a think tank that advises the ministry. of the defense. But for him, “demobilizing even 30,000 experienced fighters” amounts to “self-sabotage”. The new mobilized conscripts have already started to be sent to positions for several months, several military experts explain to L’Express. “But the latter are not as effective as those who, like me, have two years of combat experience,” explains Mengli. “As a result, more fighters are needed to hold the same line.”
From May 18, every Ukrainian man between the ages of 18 and 60 has sixty days to register in the military register – which allows Ukraine to count its resources. Otherwise, he is exposed to administrative sanctions, or even prosecution. He may be called upon to fulfill this obligation through a summons distributed in the street or door-to-door by recruiters. The dreaded document very often leads to passing a medical commission, then to enlistment. The fact remains that the military lists are not up to date and sanctions for those who do not register or who ignore summons are rarely applied.
If, according to polls, support for the army remains extremely high among Ukrainians, few are still volunteering, as in February 2022. And some continue to want to avoid fighting. Like Bohdan, 23, a computer scientist from kyiv, who did not register on the lists, despite the obligation. The one whose father joined the army since the start of the invasion, however, feels the noose tightening. “I think I will go if I am mobilized but at the same time, I have the impression of being more useful outside the army. Even if… there are engineers in the army”, he reflects out loud, illustrating the dilemma that tears many Ukrainians apart.
And the young man explains his doubts: “Last year at the same time, there was great hope that the war would end in six months, we thought we had the means to win, it was more motivating. But , today, we don’t know what’s going to happen, and no one wants to die.” Bohdan can still count on a year and a half of guaranteed civilian life without mobilization and hopes to continue working or resume studies while waiting to turn 25.
Demography and economy
Who to mobilize, and at what age? The problem is almost insoluble in Ukraine, according to specialists. “If the war lasts a long time, we cannot afford to mobilize everyone because the economy would collapse, insists Serhiy Kouzan, the consultant for the Ministry of Defense. We cannot enlist too many young people either. because, demographically, it would threaten our survival as a nation in ten years.”
To make matters worse, healthy men under 30, who form the backbone of most armies, are among Ukraine’s smallest generation. “In the 1990s and early 2000s, with the economic crisis, the birth rate was extremely low and this phenomenon has repercussions, because it is these young men of 20 who we miss today,” analyzes the Ukrainian demographer Ella Libanova. Boys born at that time are now between 18 and 27, the age most sought after by the army. But there are more than twice as many 40-year-old men as 20-year-old men in Ukraine. As a result, today the average age in the Ukrainian army is 42 years old.
“The Russians have the same demographic problem but they have taken a different path. They mobilize people from the poorest, remote regions and ethnic minorities. And, of course, there are more of them,” continues the researcher. Ukraine now has around 37 million people, including 6 to 5 million who lived in the 17% of the territory now occupied, compared to 144 million inhabitants in Russia.
Ukraine is up against the wall. “The problem is not finding men, but finding motivated men,” judges Ella Libanova. “Of course, I understand those who don’t want to fight. It’s scary there, breathes Mengli. But the reality is that if we don’t fight, it’s over. Because the Russians will exterminate us all.” Like the military experts interviewed by L’Express, the young infantryman knows that mobilizing more men is not the miracle solution. “Even if today we mobilize 1 million, half a million people, these conscripts must be trained, dressed, equipped, armed. We already do not have enough weapons,” he sighs. “We have need artillery, aviation, drones. We, the simple soldiers, hold the lines, but this war will not be won by men, it will be won by weapons.
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