Zelensky: Ukraine can easily recruit soldiers - shortage is equipment only - it's taken over a year to get 25% of the equipment for 10 extra battalions - send the equipment and he can find soldiers

Ukraine has no need for NATO soldiers either - just their equipment

This is something Zelensky says over and over including in the recent interview with Sky News. Ukraine can find soldiers. What it needs is equipment. Yet the Western mainstream media rarely seem to pick up on what he says.

The Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) say over 2 million Ukrainians have registered to volunteer to fight with the new Ukrainian Reserve+ app, but can’t yet. The actual figure, following their link on that page, was 2.7 million Ukrainians as of 12th July 2024.

TEXT ON GRAPHIC

At least 2.7 million Ukrainians signed up to fight for their country with the Reserv+ app
Zelensky says Ukraine needs equipment not soldiers

Ukraine has ~2% of its 37 million people fighting.

It could increase this 4-fold and be far less than WW2 levels of ~12% fighting.

Modern wars need far fewer soldiers than earlier wars
- so long as they have well trained soldiers with high tech modern equipment.

Yet, the White House says that Ukraine needs to lower its conscription age to draft more soldiers.

. White House pressing Ukraine to draft 18-year-olds so it has enough troops to battle Russia

As you can see, this claim doesn’t survive the most basic fact check. As RUSI puts it:

success depends in the end not only on the improvement of Ukrainian recruiting [a problem already solved], but also on the quality of Western logistics.

[comment in square brackets summarizes what they say earlier in the article]

. The Current State of Ukrainian Mobilisation and Ways to Boost Recruitment

I.e. the problem is an issue with the supply chains from Western stockpiles of armoured vehicles and other supplies for the war to the brigades that need them in Ukraine.

Western media runs many stories suggesting Ukraine has a severe shortage of soldiers. This is an example:

. Desertion threatens to starve Ukraine’s forces at a crucial time in its war with Russia

Then we get other stories with allies suggesting they solve Ukraine’s shortage of soldiers by sending in NATO soldiers. France mainly, back in May.

. Macron reaffirms possibility of sending troops to Ukraine

Commenting on this media coverage, RUSI say

This coverage presents the current situation in a distorted form, which often does not correspond to reality and completely misdirects uninitiated and even partially initiated observers.

. The Current State of Ukrainian Mobilisation and Ways to Boost Recruitment

These stories scare the people I help. They worry about NATO soldiers fighting with Russia in Ukraine.

But this is NOT what Ukraine needs. It just needs the equipment any NATO brigades would be equipped with to fight a war. It seems highly unlikely Zelensky would want foreign troops when the real problem is a shortage of equipment.

If Russia was invading tiny Moldova, yes, Moldova couldn’t hold off the Russian army by itself. But Ukraine can, with its population of 37 million. That is plenty of people and to spare to recruit enough soldiers for a modern war, where equipment matters far more than num. With WW2 levels of conscription they would be able to recruit 4.44 million. The current army is about 600,000. It is just not credible that they can’t find enough soldiers for their army if they had the equipment.

This graphic helps explain:

TEXT ON GRAPHIC

Zelensky says they need equipment not soldiers.

Why requests to reduce conscription age to 18+ make no sense.

Ukraine population around 37 million in 2024.

At WW2 levels of conscription of 12%, it could recruit an army of 4.44 million, currently at 900,000

Zelensky says he can find plenty more soldiers aged 25+ if his allies can provide the equipment

. Ukraine population - Population Division - United Nations

western media runs many stories suggesting Ukraine has a severe shortage of soldiers. This is an example:

. Desertion threatens to starve Ukraine’s forces at a crucial time in its war with Russia

Zelensky says he has

• enough equipment for the current army (perhaps 600,000?)

• 10 battalions of soldiers he wants to add to those numbers or about 20,000 extra soldiers, at 2,000 per brigade

• so if the number is 600,000 he wants to increase it to 620,000.

But though he asked for the equipment a year ago so far he only got enough fo

• 2 and a half extra battalions.

• ~5,000 extra soldiers.

So they gave him enough to increase to say 605,000 but not enough to reach his desired goal of 620,000 (assuming the army is currently 600,000)

In the Sky News interview, Zelensky is emotional about it, especially about how reducing the recruiting age to 18+ and recruiting more soldiers without equipment means sending them to battle to just die. He says this would be irresponsible.

A few soldiers with better equipment can hold back many more with less equipment. He needs everything that a NATO brigade would have

So it is a solvable problem. He doesn't understand why it takes his allies so long to find the equipment.

By equipment here he doesn't go into details in this interview, but from other sources, it includes things like infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, howitzers, electronic warfare equipment, counter artillery, etc [modern tanks also help but Ukraine has large numbers of ex Soviet era T-64s., as Ukraine used to make the tanks for the Soviet Union].

Infantry fighting vehicles especially make a big difference on the modern battlefield as otherwise the soldiers would have to walk or drive to the front line in trucks.

Zelensky also says air defences such as the Patriots would also make a huge difference to protect them at the front line. NATO soldiers wouldn’t go into battle without air defences, indeed he says his partners don’t understand how they can fight without air cover as well, and they have spare Patriot systems but there are huge delays in getting them to Ukraine.

First if asked if he will need less soldiers with more equipment he says yes.

He says the reason they don’t recruit more soldiers is they need equipment for them and he has 10 brigades (about 30,000 soldiers) an

TRANSCRIPTION

. YouTube
29:49: Q. There are Battlefield losses the East is is proving very difficult you don't have enough soldiers your own soldiers have told me there aren't enough soldiers, is there anything that could be given by NATO or by the United States to help with that problem, the lack of soldiers? Are there weapon systems that if you had, you need less soldiers?

A. Yes.
Q. What are they?
A. We need to equip these brigades. When you have soldiers, we need to equip those brigades, otherwise you will take the soldiers, and move brigades to other brigades just to equip other brigades.

So you will never have enough resources. Because it doesn't matter.

He says reducing the recruitment age so young people join will just mean they die without the weapons they need.

He says many Ukrainians want to fight but without weapons it’s just not responsible.

Somebody asked me, I don't want to tell you the position of some leaders in Europe about mobilization - that you need young people to join etc.

I said what do you want - for them to die without your weapons?

Do you want me just to mobilize young guys and they don't know where to go in which Brigade or to fight with which weapons.

A lot of them want [to fight] but it's just not responsible.

He says a lot of people talk about bringing down the age of conscription.

Q. Because you are talking about bringing down the age of conscription

[Zelensky protects young people under 25 from conscription so that his country can continue to have qualified people for civilian society for after the war is over]

A. A lot of people will talk. ... with politics it's always like this if you have a problem closing a gap [here the problem of supplying enough weapons] you have to create a new problem.

But that is not the real problem, it’s a way of deflecting from the real problem, which is equipment:

He explains the issue is with 10 brigades Ukraine already has which its allies didn’t equip.

So they speak about mobilization but the real problem is with 10 brigades which our partners didn't equip. [Soldiers Ukraine already has but can't equip]

I asked them very much more than one year ago that we need to equip these brigades we made this solution with United States and with European allies and [even]] today Europe and the United States have equipped two and a half brigades in total.

He doesn’t know what the holdup is. Bureaucracy, they don’t think this is the priority, and so on.

Q. So have they abandoned you then why aren't they giving you more weapons?

I don't know, this it's their decision there are some some bureaucracy some decisions, they don't think that this is the priority etc,

It's always the same way during this war but we are thankful for at least for those things which they gave.

Anyway this is big support big support but but it depends on the number of equipped brigades.

When you speak about the control situation on the East of Ukraine it depends on this.

He says nobody in the West has fought a war like this without jets controlling the skies above their soldiers.

They don’t understand how Ukraine can fight without control of the air

Nobody from the West have ever fought in such a war and nobody has fought without jets.

They all say you can't do real strong offensive operations without air control.

They say "We don't understand how they fight without control of the sky."

He says they also need air defences.

So of course we need air defences and some equipped brigades.

[He explains earlier in the interview that there are enough spare Patriot systems in Europe alone to supply Ukraine with the defences it needs if they can give them to Ukraine - but same thing always hold ups]

But we will do it.

YouTube

When interviewer says he accepts there is a limit on the number of men he can conscript, Zelensky says no, that’s not the problem. If his allies give him equipment he can find the soldiers

Q. So that is a big failure. You accept there are only so many men you can have because there's a limit but the real failure then is the lack of weapons sent to Ukraine

[This is a very common misunderstanding, the issue is not a lack of men at all as Ukraine is at far less than UK war levels of conscription they could double or triple their army if they had the equipment as I've said in my debunks]

A. Limited number of soldiers? I believe we have a lot of soldiers. But the limitation is that frankly we must save as many lives as possible.

And if in European or American offices there is an idea that we need to do something differently about the draft age, I want to just ask our partners to do their part of the job [equipment] and we will deal with our part of the job [soldiers].

There are numerous articles in Western Media claiming that Ukraine has a shortage of soldiers. But these are usually sourced to statements from Ukraine’s allies.

Ukraine doesn't say it has a shortage of soldiers. It has plenty of soldiers, the issue is the equipment.

Same also with all these claims that NATO forces are needed to support Ukraine. What it needs is their equipment.

If NATO was prepared to send say 20,000 soldiers to fight in Ukraine - they could help far more by sending just the EQUIPMENT for 20,000 soldiers which could then be used by native Ukrainians who speak the same language, understand the Ukrainian landscape and conditions etc.

It has more than 20,000 spare soldiers already it can't use because they don't have the equipment and can easily recruit many more soldiers if they have the equipment for them. That is not their problem.

Here is an example statement recently from the White House

This is what John Kelly says according to the Washington Post:

“We’re absolutely going to keep sending Ukraine weapons and equipment. We know that’s vital. But so, too, is manpower at this point. In fact, we believe manpower is the most vital need they have. So we’re also ready to ramp up our training capacity if they take appropriate steps to fill out their ranks.”

. Biden surges arms to Ukraine, fearing Trump will halt U.S. aid

Washington Post summarise it as:

Yet some in the administration have taken the view that no matter what Washington does, Kyiv’s military will remain outmatched without far more soldiers to sustain its fight. And even as they accelerate arms shipments, there is growing frustration with Ukraine’s leaders, who have resisted U.S. calls to lower the country’s draft age from 25 to 18.

. Biden surges arms to Ukraine, fearing Trump will halt U.S. aid

But it’s up to Ukraine not the USA how it recruits soldiers.

Given the size of Ukraine’s population, they could easily recruit many times the 600,000 they currently have.

Repeating the graphic from the start of this article:

TEXT ON GRAPHIC

Zelensky says they need equipment not soldiers.

Why requests to reduce conscription age to 18+ make no sense.

Ukraine population around 37 million in 2024.

At WW2 levels of conscription of 12%, it could recruit an army of 4.44 million, currently at 900,000

Zelensky says he can find plenty more soldiers aged 25+ if his allies can provide the equipment

. Ukraine population - Population Division - United Nations

Ukraine with its recruitment age of 25+ has 600,000 out of 37 million or 1.6% of its population fighting. Others say its army is 900,000, that would still be only 2.5%.

That may seem a lot but it isn't all out war levels of conscription.

UK had 24.4% of the male population fighting in WW2. The percentages were similar in USA, and even higher in Germany and Axis countries.

In 2024, Roughly half the Ukrianian population is male, from the population pyramid on that same page.

So WW2 levels of conscription would be around 12% of 37 million for a rough estimate or around 4.44 million.

So Ukraine could increase that 1.6% or 2.5% or whatever it is many times over if it needed to, if it was in an all out war where numbers of soldiers matter like in WW2.

. WWII: share of male population mobilized by country 1937-1945 | Statista

So it simply doesn’t add up. There is no way that Ukraine can be limited by its conscription age of 25+

Ukraine is certainly at all out war levels of conscription but at nowhere near the levels of WW2. The smaller percentages compared to WW2 are presumably because in a modern war expertise and equipment matters far more than numbers of soldiers.

The Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) confirms what Zelensky says, as I mentioned in the intro

RUSI says Ukraine had a temporary shortage earlier this year but after launching the app Reserve+, by 12th July, 2024, 2.7 million Ukrainians had joined the online queue to enlist. Meanwhile as of 18th August, Ukraine had 30 territorial defence brigades (~60,000 soldiers) armed with only small arms and mortars which could be transformed into fully-fledged mechanized brigades if they had armoured vehicles, artillery, electronic warfare equipment and so on. It had 14 brigades (~28,000 soldiers) with no equipment at all.

Here a Ukrainian brigade has 1,000 to 8,000 soldiers in it depending on the purpose of the brigade. A typical Ukrainian mechanized brigade has 2,000 soldiers.

Here is a longer quote from RUSI with those figures:

QUOTE STARTS

Recently, both in the Western and Ukrainian media, there has been a discussion about the problems associated with the recruitment of new military personnel into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This coverage presents the current situation in a distorted form, which often does not correspond to reality and completely misdirects uninitiated and even partially initiated observers.

….

Difficulties with the recruitment of new military personnel began to arise only at the end of 2023, after the Ukrainian counteroffensive was choked off.

…

There is nothing surprising in this, since the number of volunteers traditionally falls after the first year of a war, as other European countries have repeatedly experienced before – for example, during the First World War.

…

As has become a pattern for Ukraine, modern technology came to the aid of the government. Understanding the military’s inability to form a single system of accounting for conscripts, the Ministry of Defense launched the mobile application ‘Reserve+’, in which every man could update data about his location, telephone number and e-mail address, as well as clarify his military accounting specialty, rank and state of health. In the first days of the application's operation, more than a million reservists were registered; as of the beginning of July 2024, more than 2 million people had been registered in ‘Reserve+’.

…

Ukraine definitely needs to increase the manpower of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and replenish losses, and initiatives such as ‘Reserve+’ demonstrate that it is capable of doing this. However, the combat effectiveness of units depends not only on their number, but also on the level of provision of military equipment. There are still more than 30 territorial defence brigades in the Armed Forces, armed only with small arms and mortars, although they could be transformed into full-fledged mechanised brigades if they were to be provided with armoured vehicles, artillery, electronic warfare equipment and so on. The insufficient amount of weapons and military equipment is also a problem for regular brigades. For example, the 14 reserve brigades created by Ukraine cannot be used in combat zones due to the delay in the delivery of equipment that was promised by partners. Thus, success depends in the end not only on the improvement of Ukrainian recruiting, but also on the quality of Western logistics.

. The Current State of Ukrainian Mobilisation and Ways to Boost Recruitment

This confirms that what is limiting Ukraine is equipment, not the numbers of soldiers.

This claim that Ukraine is limited by a shortage of soldiers willing to enlist aged 25+ doesn’t survive fact check.

This is an important detail that I thought I should fact check because it comes up so often as a question from scared people. Especially they often worry that Ukraine will need to get help from NATO soldiers fighting at the front line to supplement their soldiers.

No they do not. With a population of 37 million and the smaller numbers of soldiers needed in modern wars they do NOT have problems finding enough soldiers. Moldova would, but is safe from a direct attack, sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania. Georgia would likely struggle to find soldiers if it needed to fight a war, but Russia is fully occupied in Ukraine at present.

Ukraine has no problem finding enough soldiers once it has the equipment.

So here is my fact check to refer scared people to for the details for this very frequently asked question.

My focus here is to fact check the claims of a shortage of soldiers.

But the positive side of this is that the issue of equipment is one that Ukraine’s allies can solve. It seems to be more of an issue of bureaucracy than funding. The time it takes for the equipment they promised to get to Ukraine.

On a positive note, Ukraine’s allies seem to be stepping up on supplies of infantry fighting vehicles etc again

Zelensky isn't just talking to us, he is talking to his allies too. And they are responding. From what he said, it's much more to do with bureaucracy than funding.

.Hopefully in the US's final funding push some of Ukraine's problems with its underequipped brigades get solved. Based on various recent announcements it sounds as if some of the shortfalls at least are in the process of being met.

It also has its European partners. Sweden is providing 250 armoured personnel carriers

. Breaking News: Swedish PBV 302 Armored Personnel Carriers on Their Way to Ukraine Spotted in Germany

Also 50 infantry fighting vehicles.

. swedens-infantry-fighting-vehicles-are-on-their-way-to-ukraine/

Netherlands sent 28 tracked amphibious armoured vehicles.

. Ukraine to Receive Viking Amphibious Vehicles From the Netherlands

Ukraine itself has bought 200 armoured fighting vehicles from a local partner

. Ukraine Procures 200 Armored Vehicles From Local Partner

Biden is moving as much as he can of his $9 billion to Ukraine before he leaves office.

He is also making sure Ukraine gets the $50 billion in frozen Russian assets. That is mainly from Europe but US is playing a part to make sure it gets them.

Also Blinken mentions armoured vehicles specifically in his latest funding announcement.

And Biden is committed to spend every cent of the $61 billion Ukraine bill before he leaves office.

QUOTE STARTS

We’ve provided, through NATO, critical non-lethal support. We created the NATO-Ukraine Council, which met just again here in Brussels. We’ve launched a new command, the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine command, to coordinate future efforts and to help speed Ukraine’s path to membership. The United States has been surging our own resources and security assistance to continue to help build up Ukraine’s air defenses, its artillery, its armored vehicles. We are determined – and it’s fully my intent and the President’s intent – to spend every cent that we have available from the $61 billion that were authorized by Congress in the supplemental appropriation.

With the G7, we’re finalizing moving out the door $50 billion secured by frozen Russian assets. At the same time, NATO Allies and partners of NATO are sharing the burden and shouldering even more of the responsibility. Germany, for example, just made a pledge of $680 million in new military aid. Bulgaria, Czechia, Sweden, others providing personnel to this new NATO command. All told, the United States has provided $102 billion in assistance to Ukraine, our allies and partners $158 billion. And as I said many times before, this may be the best example of burden sharing that I’ve seen in the 32 years that I’ve been doing this.

And of course when it comes to our own investment, most of it has been invested in our own defense industrial base to produce weapons that Ukraine needs, but those investments are strengthening our defense industrial base and they’re providing good jobs in the United States. We welcomed the Ukrainian foreign minister here to NATO, along with the EU’s new High Representative Kaja Kallas, and in doing that, we reaffirmed the commitment to Ukraine’s defense and to its irreversible path to NATO and EU membership. We continue coordinating to ensure that Ukraine has the money, the munitions, and the mobilized forces to fight as necessary through next year – or to be able to negotiate, but from a position of strength.

. Technical Difficulties

See also my:

BLOG: How Europe is Trump-proofing NATO - it can defend itself from Russia and ALSO support Ukraine without the USA - Biden is helping Europe transition to a Trump term where the US no longer leads NATO

Right now Ukraine's problem is an equipment shortage but Zelensky is drawing attention to it. The aim would be to get his allies to solve it.

See also my:

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