A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian army, which swelled to 1 million soldiers at the beginning of Russia’s 2022 invasion, is now struggling to replenish its ranks. Enlistments have declined sharply, forcing Kyiv to rely increasingly on mandatory mobilization.
Kyiv’s recruitment woes are compounded by a dire demographic situation, with 6.5 million Ukrainians having fled the country and about 3 million now living under Russian occupation. Ukraine’s population has shrunk from a prewar total of 41 million to about 28 million to 30 million.
With the manpower shortage, Ukraine is desperate for cash to attract recruits. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Europe last month to help him boost military pay.
“Previously, Europeans refused to provide funding for the salaries of our military personnel, only for weapons. Our service members themselves can be the weapon that protects everyone,” Mr. Zelenskyy told reporters on July 25.
Although it remains to be seen whether his request will be accepted, the announcement coincides with mounting Russian pressure in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Sumy regions and growing recruitment challenges within the Ukrainian army.
After more than three years of brutal attritional warfare, the initial patriotic surge that led tens of thousands of Ukrainians to enlist in the early months of the war has waned. Much of the population willing and able to serve has already joined the army, and many have been wounded, killed or exhausted by repeated deployments.
In 2024, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said only about 12% of new recruits had joined voluntarily. The rest were conscripted and mobilized under legal mandates that have sparked criticism from civil society and human rights groups.
Street protests erupted after the emergence of social media videos showing recruitment officers violently yanking conscripts off the streets and whisking them away in vans to be inducted into the military. The Financial Times reported that a crowd of 80 protesters in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Friday tried to break through security at a stadium being used as a recruitment center to free recently mobilized conscripts.
The manpower shortage is severe enough that Mr. Zelenskyy has signed legislation allowing volunteers 60 and older to join. The average Ukrainian soldier is 40 or older. Mr. Zelenskyy has resisted calls to lower the conscription age below the limit of 25. He said he would not sacrifice the country’s next generation to the war effort.
In recent months, the Ukrainian government has begun several initiatives to revive its flagging recruitment drive. The Contract 18–24 program offers up to about $24,000 in sign-up bonuses, attractive wages, free university tuition and mortgage incentives for young enlistees. However, only about 500 people signed up as of May.
With a population of more than 140 million, Russia can field a much larger force. However, President Vladimir Putin’s army has paid a steep cost for his ambitions. A June assessment by British defense intelligence said Russia had sustained more than 1 million combat losses since the war began, including roughly 250,000 killed or missing.
Meanwhile, an analysis published by the KSE Institute cites a sharp reduction in Russia’s once-substantial stockpiles of Soviet-era equipment and weapons. Shipments from storage depots to the front plunged from 242,000 tons in 2022 to an estimated 119,000 tons, and analysts said the most serviceable and easily refurbished equipment has already been deployed.
Despite heavy losses, Kyiv said Moscow is still fielding close to 700,000 troops in Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry claims to be recruiting 50,000 to 60,000 soldiers each month. In 2024 alone, Russia reportedly signed more than 430,000 military contracts. This recruitment effort is backed by substantial cash incentives, with bonuses exceeding five times the average Russian monthly wage, preferential access to housing and even reduced prison sentences for convicts who agree to serve.
Still, Russia’s demographic outlook is not much rosier. The country’s population is shrinking, thanks to a combination of low birth rates, war casualties and an exodus of military-age men seeking to avoid conscription.
Hoping to bolster their war effort, Russia and Ukraine alike have welcomed foreign volunteers to join their ranks. Although their exact number is hard to ascertain, estimates suggest several thousand foreigners are serving in Ukraine, many of them within the ranks of Ukraine’s International Legion, an outfit composed of volunteers from more than 100 countries.
Russia has similarly drawn from its prisons and foreign recruits and is increasingly leaning on its allies for ammunition and manpower. Most notably, thousands of North Korean soldiers were deployed alongside Russian forces late last year in Russia’s disputed Kursk region. Credible reports have also surfaced of foreign migrants from Africa, Central Asia and Nepal being misled or coerced into signing Russian military contracts under false pretenses, having been promised jobs or student visas.
That practice recently made headlines after a U.S. citizen was reportedly deceived into joining the fight in Ukraine. After relocating with his family from Texas to Russia early this year to escape woke values, Derek Huffman enlisted with assurances that he would be given a noncombat position to expedite the process of acquiring Russian citizenship. Within weeks, however, he was abruptly assigned to an infantry role on the Ukrainian front despite limited Russian language skills and minimal training. His wife, DeAnna, later lamented that he had been “thrown to the wolves” and said her husband had yet to receive the money he was owed for his service.
The diplomatic situation, meanwhile, has grown more volatile. On July 29, President Trump issued a sharp ultimatum to the Kremlin, shortening a 50-day timeline for a ceasefire agreement to just 10 to 12 days. The new deadline falls on Friday. The move includes threats of sweeping secondary sanctions and 100% tariffs on countries continuing to buy Russian oil.
Russian officials said they had “taken note” of the deadline but dismissed it as ineffectual. “Russia is immune to these threats,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. “We do not respond to ultimatums.” Earlier, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov accused Kyiv and the West of rejecting all serious peace proposals and reaffirmed that Russia would not normalize relations with Ukraine or NATO until its “military objectives” were fully achieved.
Mr. Trump last week announced a 25% tariff on goods from India as well as an additional import tax, reasoning that New Delhi’s purchases of military equipment and oil from Russia had enabled the war in Ukraine.
Still, even as Mr. Trump shows growing irritation at Moscow’s unwillingness to negotiate, the diplomatic chessboard remains frozen.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.