Ukraine’s government, led by Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi, has finalized changes to its worker deferment system on Friday, Oct. 23, effectively ending automatic exemptions from mobilization for defense and energy companies.
The overhaul aims to create fair rules for those working away from the front, and, above all, for soldiers who have been fighting for nearly five years and need a realistic chance to return home. The number of deferred workers is rising by tens of thousands each month, according to Koretskyi’s estimates.
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“Unconditional full deferment is unfair to those who serve and opens the door to misuse,” Koretskyi said, adding that some companies had been set up purely to obtain deferments and that “it became a business.”
Four changes to follow
First, a company’s status as critical will no longer depend on its economic performance.
Sectors that directly support defense and the economy – including weapons production, energy, communications, logistics, and housing and utilities – will keep their status. However, the criteria will be updated and checked for misuse.
In an interview with BBC Ukraine on Monday, Oct. 19, Koretskyi said high salaries and the absence of tax debts do not, on their own, make a company critical.
Second, defense and energy companies will no longer be able to automatically defer 100% of their employees. While Koretskyi did not specify the new limit, earlier proposals had suggested lowering it to 85% in the defense and energy sectors, and from 75% to 60% in the utilities sector, according to the New Voice of Ukraine.
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Companies that need more workers deferred to keep operating can submit a justified request to the Coordination Center.
Third; tougher enforcement. The Defense Ministry will increase penalties for evading military service, Koretskyi said.
Lastly, the government will work on developing a mechanism that would allow companies to defer all of their employees, should they regularly send some of them to serve voluntarily. Meanwhile, those who enlist would know where they would be sent and for how long, while keeping their jobs and salaries.
The Defense and Economy ministries will draft the terms with businesses, aiming for approval by Dec. 1.
What it means exactly
Men aged 25 to 60 must serve in the military under Ukrainian law, unless they obtain a legal deferment for reasons ranging from critical infrastructure employment to medical reasons.
Under Cabinet Resolution No. 76, which sets out Ukraine’s deferment procedure during martial law, most critical companies can defer up to 50% of their draft-age employees, while defense and energy firms have been allowed to defer up to 100%.
The new approach makes full protection conditional – companies can keep their entire workforce only in case they contribute to the military on a rotating basis.
This would essentially give frontline troops confidence that they will be replaced by others, Koretskyi said, while giving new recruits a clear term of service.
“The ultimate goal is that no one has to search for anyone on the streets,” he said, in an apparent reference to recruiters forcibly detaining men in public, while they are grocery shopping or walking somewhere.
The changes, however, do not signal an immediate escalation. “These decisions do not mean tougher mobilization starting tomorrow,” Koretskyi said, adding that Ukraine must nonetheless be prepared for any scenario, including expanded mobilization in Russia.
Only a month earlier, on Sept. 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree No. 700, increasing the size of Russia’s armed forces to 2.4 million, including 1.5 million active-duty military personnel. It marked the fourth time such a decree was signed during this year alone.
The announcement around the same time President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia had already begun additional mobilization, including the expansion of foreign troops, with over 8,000 already in Russia and up to 50,000 more planned.
The decisions faced industry pushback
Defense manufacturers had lobbied against the measures before they were even finalized.
On Oct. 17, industry groups told UNN that lowering the quota, even to 85%, could halt production lines, delay weapons deliveries and expose companies to penalties for missing state contract lines.
Weapons production runs in sequential stages, so losing a few key engineers or welders at one stage can stall an entire line, with replacements taking months or even years to train, they argued.
The Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers said it had not been consulted and had seen no assessment of how the change would affect production.
Serhii Pashynskyi, head of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industry Enterprises (NAUDI) told UNN that several thousand workers who would lose deferments “will definitely not solve the problem of mobilization to the Defense Forces.”
According to the industry representatives, defense workers make up no more than 10% of all deferred conscription-aged civilians, while NAUDI says the sector supplies the military with more than $10 billion in equipment and weapons each year.
Manufacturers have instead called for keeping 100% deferment and carrying out targeted inspections of individual companies suspected of abuse or misuse of the law.
Former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov claimed in January that two million Ukrainian citizens were wanted for alleged mobilization evasion at the time, while another 200,000 servicemen were listed as absent without official leave (AWOL).
On Sept. 1, he had obtained a legal deferment from military mobilization via work with the charitable group “Eastern Europe Foundation,” with some lawmakers casting doubt on the document’s legitimacy.