Thread by @KI_Insight

Ukraine’s mobilization data drive ended yesterday.
TLDR: enough people have submitted their information to meet mobilization needs (financing them is a different issue)
The bigger problem is up to 4M “lawbreakers”, a major social and political headache
A 🧵

The deadline for military aged men (and some women) to update their data ended July 16.
So far, just ~4.5M have done so, 3.2M via the purpose-built Reserve+ app.
An est. 8-9M people should have updated their data in the legally required term of May 18-July 16

Note: (almost) all data in 🇺🇦is fuzzy (addressing this was a major reason for the data update).
There's~ 9.5M men are in scope age-wise. A lot have deferments, but also had to update their data (as did women with med training); here's how it breaks down

One wrinkle - currently serving personnel don't have to update data, but many did (it's convenient e.g., to pass street checks).
Another - there's still bottlenecks in processing people, esp. in person (the app works pretty well, but not always for "unusual" cases)

But this all leaves potentially up to 4M men who have broken the law and from today (July 17) could face fines of UAH 17-25K ($400-600).

(sidenote: the current mobilization admin would probably take months to process these fines)

But that's far from the biggest problem‼️

1 - there's growing polarization btw those "doing their part" and those avoiding it. It won't get better, and there's debate if the latter should be allowed to e.g., run for office

Long term, its possible to imagine them being targeted by populist/ pro-🇷🇺political movements

2 - more urgently, a lot of the people will be pushed further into the shadow economy. Many already live somewhat "off the grid" (use cash, crypto, avoid public services)
Having a growing shadow sector is not helpful for Ukraine

3 - equally worrying, they become more vulnerable to criminals (e.g., threatening to deliver them if they don't receive a payoff; there are some reports of such activities, though they are marginal atm) or to be recruited by Russian intelligence

In general, many of these men are angry with the Zelensky administration and becoming angrier.

That's a security issue

But there is some good news...

While it is unclear what share of those who updated their data can actually serve (unverified accounts suggest around half - a similar share to the population overall), but with 4.5M in the database, that is more than enough for the foreseeable future

Zelensky has previously voiced a need of 500K in 2024 but later said this many won't be needed. More recent figures suggest a need of 120-300K depending
on strategy, rotation...

The bigger bottleneck, right now, is the budget. 🇺🇦 had about ~$20B budgeted for personnel in 2024

With over 1M current personnel, there's not much room to add more (consider 1M*20K/ year =20B).
But mobilized doesn't mean fighting - many who receive notices get stuck in the system, go into the Mil-Ind complex, there is likely "leakage" in the system...

This is a big step for Ukraine.
It solved some allies' criticism 🇺🇦 wasn't tackling mobilization seriously enough and likely secures foreseeable manpower needs
But it also unveils the next set of problems

/END

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