Closed sociological surveys conducted by the Rating Group on mobilisation have shown that Ukrainians do not consider the lottery for conscription to be fair. The head of the Servant of the People faction, Davyd Arakhamiya, said this during a panel discussion "2024: Scenarios for the Country" organised by New Country, a joint project by LB.ua and EFI Group.
According to him, there was a "wave" of mobilisation at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, when enemy troops were already near the capital. And when the war was pushed to a place "10 hours away by car," the attitude of Kyiv residents changed.
"This is the biggest challenge the country is facing right now. It is impossible not to mobilise, we all understand this. Because then we will go back to a year and a half ago, when they will be near Kyiv, and then we will all be ready to mobilise again, but it may be too late," the MP said.
Arakhamiya believes that many people have a distorted perception of military service and believe that they will be sent to the front without training to die. He admitted that such cases did happen, and now people say they do not want to be in such an army.
"We are now working with the Ministry of Defence to ensure a normal campaign. I believe that all civil servants should go to boot camps, to live there, not some VIP groups, and MPs too. I definitely should. I am, in fact, an ideologue of this. We should all study there in different groups with ordinary people. We should eat with them, talk to them, then everyone will see that it is not so scary. Moreover, I don't envy the commander of the boot camp, where there will be many MPs and they will be taught badly. You understand that they will simply eat him alive and keep changing the staff until they establish a certain level of training. All the boot camps across the country need to be engaged. I think it is necessary. Ministers, deputy ministers, heads of departments should also attend. They should study at least part-time," he said.
Arakhamiya also said that he had offered the president to declassify data on Ukraine's losses in the war. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not yet made a decision on this.
"When you go out and ask people about the losses, I have never heard anything lower than 100,000. And our losses are much lower," he added.
Arakhamiya suggested that realising Ukraine's true losses in the war would show that the losses "are not as high as one imagines".
In addition, Arakhamiya spoke in favour of the so-called smart mobilization, that is when all skills, education, and civilian background are taken into account.
"People want to see that the state will take care of them properly," he said.
Arakhamiya said that there will be certificates of persons liable for military service. Initially, it was planned that every person of conscription age should have them, but then it was decided to do this only for people of mobilisation age (now it is 27-60).
"We did it this way so that we, as a state, understand what kind of mobilisation resource we have," he explained.
Arakhamiya hopes that the new model will be operational in four months.
Zelenskyy earlier said that the decision not to disclose the losses had been taken together with the military.