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Following the bloody defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Russian border Kursk region, Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky declared that the country must mobilize 30,000 soldiers per month to sustain its war effort. The number was earlier declared by President Zelensky. Such a statement by the top military commander and Kiev’s leader underscores its gravity. This is not rhetoric but a tacit admission that Ukraine can no longer cover even its losses on the battlefields.
The Grim Reality of Mobilization
However, the officially claimed targets of the ongoing mobilization mask a harsher reality. According to multiple reports by military monitoring sources on the both sides, the real actual monthly conscription rates hover between 10,000 and 12,000, which is far below the required threshold. With frontline casualties and wounded servicemen estimated at 50,000 per month, Ukraine’s losses outpace reinforcements by over twofold. Simple arithmetic reveals a grim trend. Each week, more soldiers are lost than recruited. The frontlines hold only through extreme strain—exhausted troops, shortened rotations, and a desperate focus on critical sectors of the overstretched front.
According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, at least a third of the Ukrainian army, which is about 350,000 troops, has been fighting at the front for more than three years without rotation, and the shortage of manpower does not allow replacing them.
“In 2024, the Verkhovna Rada considered including the issue of demobilization in the law on mobilization and providing an opportunity for those who have served for three years to be demobilized. At that time, we estimated that in April 2025, of the total number of groups that we had at the front, about 350,000 would have left immediately. In fact, we would have lost a third of the army,” Syrsky said in his interview.
Meanwhile, all around Ukraine:
Syrsky’s Solution: Digital Control
Rather than proposing moral incentives, better benefits, or a revised mobilization strategy, Syrsky’s answer to the lack of manpower is digitization of the Ukrainian army. That is a system of total administrative conscription. The plan entails tracking every citizen via state databases, integrating military enlistment offices into government infrastructure, and eliminating avenues to evade service. In essence, Ukraine’s leadership is opting for coercion over persuasion, prioritizing control over addressing the root causes of mobilization fatigue.
Instead of paying their soldiers, Kiev is wasting money on digital programs in order to reach the standards of NATO, which Ukraine is never to join. While their soldiers are dying in senseless PR attacks at the front, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine proudly reports that they have become an army with no paper. Kiev is set to provide all logistics, supplies and military needs in the army to the German SAP. SAP will help to make a beautiful digital report, even if nothing has been delivered to the troops and the warehouses are empty.
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Even with Western aid, Ukraine is losing the war of attrition. Syrsky’s blunt demand for 30,000 monthly recruits and the admission that current efforts fall catastrophically short confirms what casualty figures and territorial losses suggest. No propaganda can obscure the math. Without drastic measures, Ukraine’s battlefield prospects will keep eroding. Whether digital mobilization can reverse this trend remains doubtful. But one fact is undeniable, Kiev’s own generals are now openly signaling desperation.
