Ukrainian lawmakers have sparked outrage after scrapping a provision in a draft law that would have given long-serving soldiers on the front lines a chance to return home.
With Ukrainian troops outnumbering Russia on the battlefield, “the offensive continues along the entire front line.” Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Dmytro Razutkin said on state television on Wednesday that it was not currently possible to weaken defense forces.
“We cannot make hasty decisions now,” he added, explaining the military’s objections to the provision.
Military leaders have pressured politicians to abandon a draft amendment that would have given soldiers with more than 36 months’ service the possibility of being discharged.
The draft law passed its first reading in parliament in February. The draft includes a demobilization plan after more than a year of debate over conscription policy.
But Iryna Friz, a member of the parliament’s defense committee, said in a Facebook post that the provision was removed before the second reading on Wednesday following an appeal by the army chief of staff and defense minister.
The reversal immediately spread across Ukraine, a country exhausted by years of war, and threatened to weaken the morale of already strained armed forces.
“This is a disaster,” Oleksandr, a 46-year-old artilleryman from the Donetsk region, told AFP.
For many, he said, the demobilization date is a source of motivation to keep fighting.
“When a guy knows when he’s demobilized, he has a different attitude,” he said. “If one acts like a slave, nothing good can come of it.”
Sergiy Gnezdilov, an activist and soldier fighting for the city of Mariupol, called the move a “cruel twist”.
Ukraine’s armed forces have been fighting since Russian-backed separatists seized the border region in 2014.
Russia subsequently launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, with Kiev’s forces currently fighting on a 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front in the east and south.
The draft bill also eliminates several financial benefits for soldiers, and the government will instead review the “military personnel rotation mechanism,” Frieze said.
Soldier and politician Yuri Gudimanco criticized the new version of the proposed law as “neither punishing tax evaders nor bringing huge benefits to the newly mobilized people”.
He predicted this would lead to “an increase in unauthorized absences from work, medical board purchasing decisions and non-returns from leave”.
The Defense Ministry admitted on Wednesday that finding a way to free the soldiers was “necessary”.
“It’s clear that the people who have been fighting from the beginning, who have been holding the line since 2022, are exhausted,” spokesman Razot King said.
Yevgen, a paratrooper fighting in eastern Ukraine, said he had not seen his wife, who lives abroad, for two years.
Last year, he only took 10 days off for treatment. “Those soldiers who have been fighting for a long time, more than a year… they are tired,” he said. “Families are falling apart because husbands and wives haven’t been together for six months or a year.”
