Former defence minister Fedorov outlines his plan to change mobilisation in Ukraine

Former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has outlined a plan developed by his team to reform Ukraine's mobilisation process. It would involve mobilising a certain number of people in stages while allowing others to continue working and contributing to the economy rather than being placed on wanted lists.

Source: Fedorov on the YouTube channel of Serhii Sternenko

Details: Fedorov said he has a vision for how the mobilisation system could be changed.

He said his team had launched the first stage, "related to new short-term contracts, terms of service, pay, the recruitment of foreign nationals, transfers and returns of personnel who have gone absent without leave".

The second step, he said, concerns the mobilisation process itself.

Quote: "First, we need to solve the problem of unauthorised absence. Because if you have more than 200,000 people absent without leave, you are constantly looking for new people, then tens of thousands more go absent without leave again within a month – your mobilisation system is not really working.

Second, we have a large number of people on wanted lists. In practice, the entire state apparatus is working to find these people and, in some cases, to mobilise them using force.

Our approach was different: to introduce certain stages so that instead of having two million people on wanted lists, a specific number of people would know that they were due to be mobilised in the near future. All the necessary conditions would be created for them, from training and initial placement to how they are treated and how they choose their unit and so on, so that they can complete their service.

Meanwhile, everyone else can continue working normally for a certain period of time. I won't give away all the details. They will be working for our country's economy. Because that is no less important today for keeping the state functioning and generating money for drones."

Details: Fedorov said his team had set out the plan in detail and it involves launching 10-15 projects.

"We have an entire document describing all the stages of this process. It requires legislative changes and regulatory acts. I think the new team, or the old-new team, will be able to present it publicly and discussion of the process will then begin. But one thing is very important: before launching it, we need to discuss it with the public," he added.

Meanwhile, Fedorov said he would not disclose all the details of the plan so as not to "spoil" the surprise and avoid being the sort of person who "hasn't launched anything yet but is already telling others how to live".

"Our key idea was that we first need to address the root of the problem – why a person is afraid to join the armed forces and how to reduce those risks so that people know we are fighting for their lives and monitoring what happens to them from the moment they learn they have been selected for a particular mobilisation stage. They need to know exactly how long they will serve, how much time they have to choose a unit, where they will train, how they can defend their rights, what the state is doing to protect their lives, what is happening with the overall war strategy, how the process of protecting the individual works and so on. This is a comprehensive approach, not populism along the lines of 'let's just repaint the walls of every recruitment centre or put every manager in prison'. That doesn't work," he said.

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