In a fight taking place far from the front lines, Ukrainian lawmakers are debating a bill that could make or break their country’s fortunes in this war.
The bill would raise up to half a million new soldiers, increasing Ukraine’s standing army by half.
The increase is 10 times as many new men as the 12 brigades Ukraine raised for its 2023 counteroffensive, and it could enable the country to finally break Russia’s stranglehold on its southern regions, cutting the front in half and forcing the Kremlin into a negotiation on Kyiv’s terms.
Ukraine may have little choice because it is currently fighting a war of attrition experts say favours the side with greater manpower resources – Russia. It also seems likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin would raise more troops after his re-election.
“Putin is… planning to mobilise more men, once the election is over,” Tim Less, a lecturer at Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics, told Al Jazeera.
“Among other things, he has banned the exit of fighting-age men from the country and banned the antiwar candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, from standing in the election, for fear he may generate opposition to the war effort,” said Less. “Putin appears to have concluded that further mobilisation is essential to press home Russia’s advantage on the battlefield and that this is what he will do.”
With US aid stalled – perhaps permanently – by congressional Republicans, Putin may have concluded that 2024 was his year to win the war and that forces the moment to its crisis for Ukraine.
Ukraine mobilised men over the age of 27 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country on February 24, 2022. But only a third of its million men and women in uniform are on active combat duty, facing what Kyiv estimates are 462,000 Russian soldiers, and Russia’s Putin claims are 617,000.
