March 6, 2025: After three years of war, Ukraine is running out of soldiers. The government will not conscript women, fearing a public backlash. Currently women volunteers comprise seven percent of the military. If the number of new male troops continues to decline, the government will have no choice but to conscript women, with exemptions for those who are pregnant or taking care of children. If Ukraine runs out of soldiers, the war is over and Russia has won.

Despite that prospect, Russia is also having problems with obtaining more soldiers. Both sides are having problems with determining how many casualties there have been. Ukraine states that the Russians have suffered 200,000 dead and about 600,000 wounded. At the same time Ukraine says its own losses have been 50,000 dead, 60,000 missing, 9,000 captured and 400,000 wounded. Both sides avoid discussing or releasing data on deserters and those who actively avoid military service. Yet one of the realities for both sides is the lack of new soldiers and the growing numbers of desertions and those evading military service. Both sides are suffering from war fatigue and military age men believe there have been so many casualties that being in the military was something of a death sentence for too many soldiers.

Another factor to consider is that the war in Ukraine has been going for eleven years. Back in mid-2014 Ukrainian forces were fighting in the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region against Russian troops and local pro-Russian rebels. The Ukrainians seemed to be outnumbered and needed all the help they could get. Help came in the form of over 10,000 volunteers, out of about 50,000 Ukrainian troops in the east. By the end of 2014 Ukraine had nearly 100,000 troops in or near Donbas and volunteers still comprised nearly 20 percent of troop strength. Going into 2015 some of these volunteers became a problem. In part this was because Ukraine Army and Reserve forces had become better trained and equipped and in part because everyone now had a lot of combat experience.

Amateur enthusiasm was no longer an excuse for bad behavior. Only a few of the thirty or so volunteer battalions were the source of most of the problems. As is usually the case, the problem was not so much the volunteers but some of their idealistic, independent-minded, undisciplined and often anti-government leaders. None of the problem battalions suffered from all these problems but as a group of several thousand armed men and some women had issues and the government and military high command wanted these troublesome volunteers to behave.

The original volunteer units fell into three categories: Ministry of Defense, Ministry of the Interior and purely volunteer. Among the more numerous units were the Territorial Defense or TD battalions full of volunteers but controlled by the Ministry of Defense and long part of the national defense plans. These battalions were formed from men who had already been conscripted, done their service and were released from active duty. The military tried to keep track of where these former soldiers lived, so that they could be contacted in wartime and ordered to report for duty. There was also provision for taking men with or without prior military service as volunteers.

In 2014 the ratio of volunteers to reservists varied. A lot depended on what part of the country a TD battalion came from and how well organized the local government was. On paper each of these battalions were supposed to have 430 troops armed with light infantry weapons. In practice these battalions got so many volunteers that they often had more than 400 men but not as many weapons as they needed. The original plan was for these battalions to provide security behind the front lines. But in Donbas these battalions often found themselves on the front lines and fighting. After late 2014 most of the TD battalions became better organized, led and equipped. A few retained their volunteer spirit and leadership and one or two were considered troublesome. But since the men in these battalions were considered national heroes, the government has to proceed carefully in forcing the issue of who was in charge and how all TD troops were supposed to behave.

The ministry of Defense also formed several Reserve battalions of the National Guard from experienced volunteers. This included a lot of former and retired officers. There were only a few of these and they were more reliable and disciplined, if less physically capable because of many middle-aged volunteers.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs, which normally controls the national police and some paramilitary units used for riot control, formed over 30 special security battalions for patrolling and guarding areas recaptured from rebels. Some of these battalions had less than a hundred men initially but eventually nearly all had at least 300 and some over 500. These units became a kind of police auxiliary in the combat zone and did not cause a lot of discipline problems. Nationalists and anti-government leaders were much less of a problem.

Most of the problems were from the Nationalist units. These were men who were very anti-Russian and many were even hostile to ethnic Russians who were Ukrainian citizens. Some of the leaders and soldiers in these units were highly critical of the Ukrainian government for a number of reasons and were still a problem. The men in these battalions were very brave and resolute during the several rebel offensives and many are considered national heroes. So imposing discipline on these units and their thousand men or so was difficult and potentially a political disaster if handled the wrong way. Ukrainian commanders in Donbas wanted to be rid of these men because they caused so many operational, media and political headaches.

One thing all these volunteer troops had going for them, especially in 2014, was good morale and a willingness to fight, often to the death. For a long time this made up for their lack of discipline and training. Individual volunteers who were seriously wounded were often eager to get back to the front as quickly as possible. Motivation and fighting spirit in volunteers was extremely high. The problem now is how to get these heroes to cooperate with regular army and reserve units that are better equipped and trained and depend on troops near them to be likewise.

Russia had similar problems with its volunteers in Donbas, particularly the Cossacks but solved that problem by sending in thousands of Russian troops wearing the same nondescript uniforms as the volunteers. These Russian volunteers lacked the enthusiasm of the real volunteers and suffered such high casualties that Russia passed laws making casualty data from peacetime operations a state secret.