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Zelenskyy on mobilization: If half our army goes home, we will need to surrender

From the trenches to the parliament, Ukraine faces a delicate balancing act as President Zelenskyy acknowledges flaws in the military mobilization system while warning against any premature return of troops.
byBenjamin Looijen
27/01/2025
2 minute read
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, photo via YouTube/President of Ukraine.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, photo via YouTube/President of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy on mobilization: If half our army goes home, we will need to surrender

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that martial law provides for the mobilization of people from the age of 25, and that Russia should be forced to end the war as soon as possible in order to bring the military home.

Ukraine grapples with maintaining adequate troop levels while managing public pressure for military rotation. Zelenskyy’s stark warning about the consequences of premature demobilization underscores both the existential nature of the threat and the complex military and social dynamics that Ukraine must navigate as the war approaches its third year.

Zelenskyy spoke about Ukraine’s mobilization during wartime, in an interview with Italian journalist Cecilia Sali for the Italian Il Foglio newspaper. He agreed that the system currently in place is not ideal.

“According to the law, people aged 25 plus are mobilized today. Mobilization is underway, and it mobilizes a sufficient number of people of this age. They have rotations or vacations. But, of course, this is not enough. We definitely need to work on the quality of this,” the President of Ukraine said.

According to Zelenskyy, there are requests to bring the Ukrainian Armed Forces home, but this is not currently provided for by law. “That is, martial law provides for the mobilization of people and all the resources available in the country. Absolutely everything,” the head of state said. “And this, unfortunately, is the challenge of this war, and why we need to speed up as much as possible to end it.

”To force Russia to end this war. We are defending ourselves today. If tomorrow, for example, half of the army simply goes home, then we should have surrendered on the first day. That’s the way it is. Because if half of the people go home tomorrow, Putin will kill us all,” Zelenskyy emphasized.

As urged by Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s parliament extended martial law and general mobilization in the country starting from February 2022. Thus, martial law and mobilization have been in place in Ukraine for almost three years after the Russian full-scale invasion.

On 15 January, Ukraine’s parliament voted in favor of bills to extend martial law and mobilization in Ukraine from 8 February to 9 May, 2025.

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