A draft bill on tightening Ukraine’s mobilization rules has been withdrawn from parliament, but a new version is ready for the government to review, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said on January 11.
The bill would enable Kyiv to mobilize more people as it seeks to boost its defenses with the war against Russia’s full-scale invasion approaching the two-year mark.
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The initial draft intended to increase the pressure on conscripted men to register for military service and introduce a series of tight sanctions for those who flout the mobilization law. It also included a lowering in the reservist age from 27 to 25, which would have given the army access to a larger cohort.
The parliamentary committee for security and defense had been reviewing the draft for days before it was withdrawn.
"Our team has already prepared a new version of the draft law taking into account all the proposals agreed in the working order with the members of parliament at the meetings of the committee," Umerov said on Facebook.
The ministry is ready to submit the draft for the government's approval in the near future, he said, adding that the military needs it "as soon as possible."
Parliamentary speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk earlier cited "a joint decision" between parliamentary, government representatives, and military commanders that the bill would be reworked.
The draft law, submitted by the government in late December, immediately drew criticism from the public and politicians.
Some parts of the draft measure “directly violate human rights and others are not optimally formulated," Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary group leader of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party, said on Telegram.
Other lawmakers and analysts said that some of its provisions violated the constitution and carried corruption risks.
Umerov said it was “unacceptable in wartime” that mobilization, military registration, and rotations, were being politicized and stalled.
The draft law must be passed in several readings and then signed by Zelenskiy, who said last month that, in light of the ongoing fighting and losses, the military had proposed mobilizing 450,000-500,000 more people.
Ukraine barred men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country, but tens of thousands of conscripts have crossed the border illegally or gone abroad using forged documents.