Brussels believes the move is needed to address the Ukrainian military’s severe manpower shortage, according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service
Brussels is encouraging Kiev to start mobilizing women amid chronic manpower shortages and has demanded that Ukraine immediately make “a political decision” on the matter, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said.
Kiev launched its mobilization campaign soon after the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022. Amid mounting frontline losses and desertions, the mobilization drive has grown increasingly violent. Recruitment officers have repeatedly been filmed chasing, beating, and forcibly detaining reluctant conscripts before bundling them into vehicles in what in Ukraine has become known as “basification.”
EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, described the idea of expanding the campaign to include women as “a step in the right direction” at a recent informal EU foreign ministers’ meeting, the SVR said on Thursday, citing information it had obtained. She allegedly warned that Kiev could soon run out of manpower due to a growing shortage of men fit for military service and said that Ukraine should use Israel as a “model to follow.”
The mobilization of women has long been a subject of debate in Ukraine. MP Mariana Bezuglaya argued as early as 2024 that it was time Kiev started targeting women to meet its conscription quota. Last year, the Ukrainian presidential administration’s deputy head, Brigadier General Pavel Palisa, also voiced support for mandatory conscription of women.
According to the SVR, Brussels demanded that Kiev immediately “move from words to action” and make a formal decision to start mobilizing women.
Under current Ukrainian law, men aged 25 to 60 are subject to mobilization, while those aged 23 to 60 are generally barred from leaving the country. Women can serve voluntarily.
Kiev’s brutal mobilization campaign has encountered large-scale draft-dodging and desertion. According to Euronews, around 1.15 million fighting-age Ukrainian men had ended up in the EU as of summer 2026, despite the ban on travelling abroad. According to the SVR, up to 5.6 million Ukrainians are currently residing in various European nations, with women accounting for 43.4% of them.
Many men have proven ready to risk their lives to flee the country illegally through forests, rivers, and mountainous terrain. In February, the head of the Ukrainian border agency, Andrey Demchenko, reported that over 70 apparent draft dodgers had died since 2022, most while trying to cross the Tisza River along Ukraine’s border with Hungary and Romania.
Brussels has reportedly urged EU governments to devise legal mechanisms for sending back Ukrainian refugees residing in the bloc, the Russian intelligence service said, adding that the European Commission sees them as a reason behind the “rise of far-right sentiment” in countries such as Germany or Poland.
Some Western officials have also voiced support for the mobilization of Ukrainian women.
Last year, former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that Vladimir Zelensky should have launched a truly mass mobilization and conscripted all men and women, without sparing the younger generation.
“Zelensky took a view that he was going to preserve the 18 to 28-year-olds, so it’s not a mass conscription,” Wallace said at the time, adding that the Ukrainian leader should have mobilized everyone and “asked Europe to train them because that is not a hard ask.”
Ben Hodges, a former top commander of US forces in Europe, argued earlier that Kiev should consider both drafting women and lowering the mobilization age to 18. “I also think that there is enough work for women in the army,” he stated.
Moscow has repeatedly slammed Ukraine’s NATO backers as pushing the nation into a war “to the last Ukrainian,” describing the conflict as a Western proxy war against Russia fought through Ukraine.
