Ukrainian Lawmaker Opposes Drafting Women into Army

MOSCOW, May 19. /TASS/. Ukrainian lawmaker Maxim Buzhansky has called on members of the Vladimir Zelensky Office to leave women alone, abandoning the dream of drafting them into the army "to patch mobilization gaps."

Earlier, Pavel Palisa, Zelensky’s chief of staff, said in an interview with Ukraine’s Channel 24 that he would like "all people seeking a government job and a salary paid from the state budget to be able to get it only after serving in the army." "This is not only about men," he added.

"With all due respect, I would like members of the Office to focus on their own responsibilities instead of broader issues," Buzhansky wrote on Telegram, commenting on the statement. "I would like them and everyone else to finally leave women alone and abandon the dream of using them to patch mobilization gaps," the lawmaker noted.

In March, Ukraine saw multiple complaints about women with no military or medical background being declared wanted by territorial recruitment centers. Draft officers were said to have mistakenly included numerous women into military registers, claiming there was no mechanism to remove them from the lists. In addition, advertising billboards hinting at the mobilization of women into the ranks of the armed forces appeared across Ukraine. A regulation requiring women with medical or pharmaceutical degrees to be registered for military service came into force in the country on October 1, 2023.

In February 2022, Ukraine started general mobilization, which has been renewed multiple times since. Initially, men between the ages of 27 and 60 were subject to conscription, but in April 2024, the minimum age for mobilization was lowered to 25. On May 18, 2024, the law on toughening mobilization came into force in Ukraine. However, even such measures have been ineffective in addressing troop shortages. The Ukrainian armed forces are facing a rise in desertion and AWOL cases. The debate over the mobilization of women has been repeatedly revisited in the country.