Adopting a demobilization law now could repeat the “mistake” of the Ukrainian People’s Republic during its war against the Bolsheviks in 1918, Ruslan Stefanchuk, speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, said on national television on July 25.
Most Ukrainian soldiers cannot be legally demobilized and have been serving without long-term interruptions for the third consecutive year since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“I don’t know of any country that demobilized people during the war. Sorry, I do know of such a country – the Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1918. At that time, Defense Minister Mykola Porsh submitted a bill on demobilization to the Central Rada,” Stefanchuk said.
“It is very important for me that the current Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) does not repeat the ‘mistake’ of the Central Rada.”
The Central Rada was an analogue of parliament during the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic.
According to Vitalii Skalskyi, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Archival Affairs and Records Management, it is a common misconception that the Ukrainian People’s Republic carried out the demobilization of its regular army in January 1918, which ultimately led to its defeat in the war against the Bolsheviks.
However, Skalskyi argues that it was not the demobilization of the Ukrainian army, but the remnants of the former Russian imperial army in Ukraine.
“They were absolutely incapable and had no burning desire to fight for Ukraine,” Skalskyi told the Kyiv Independent.
However, Stefanchuk said that Ukrainian servicemen at the front “have an exclusive right to justice,” which is why it is necessary to provide them with vacations, rotations or other “privileges.”
Stefanchuk believes that these problems were partially resolved after the new law on mobilization was passed in April.
Most Ukrainian soldiers cannot be legally demobilized. Reasons for this may include health problems or the need to care for sick relatives.
In April, before the second reading of the mobilisation law, provisions on demobilisation and rotation were removed.
The defence ministry said the parliamentary committee had instructed it to draft a new law within eight months that would specifically address rotation and demobilisation.
The ministry announced in April that it planned to submit the bill to parliament in the “coming months,” although it has not yet been submitted.
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