The key facts
- The booking quota for defense-industry and energy enterprises is set at 95%; production staff and participants in defense contracts are booked in full.
- A temporary booking coordination center has been created; criticality criteria are to be revised within 10 days.
- Earlier, Prime Minister Koretsky floated the idea of exempting enterprises from mobilization in exchange for regularly handing over part of their workforce to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Cabinet introduces booking quota
Ukraine's government on October 23 set a quota for booking military-liable employees of defense-industry and fuel-and-energy enterprises at 95%. This was announced on the cabinet's website, as noted by Life.ru. The restriction applies to enterprises recognized as critically important. At the same time, employees directly involved in production, fulfillment of defense contracts, repairs, and emergency restoration work must receive bookings in full.
Coordination center and revision of criteria
To coordinate booking issues, the government created a temporary coordination center. It will review appeals from state bodies, harmonize sectoral and regional criticality criteria, and issue recommendations on revoking the relevant status. Decisions on recognizing enterprises as critically important are still made by authorized state bodies. Within 10 days after the changes take effect, ministries and regional military administrations must revise the criteria by which enterprises receive this status. No automatic review of all organizations is envisaged: companies that meet the requirements, which remain unchanged, will keep their status. When calculating the quota, citizens with deferments on other grounds will also be counted, including parents of many children and guardians.
Context: proposal for a 'new model' of mobilization
Earlier, Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhiy Koretsky stated that enterprises could be given the opportunity to exempt all their employees from mobilization in exchange for an obligation to regularly send a portion of their workers to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to him, companies would be able to plan in advance how many people and within what timeframes they must hand over to the army, which should ensure rotation of servicemen and reduce the need for forced searches of conscripts. The prime minister called this approach idealistic but expressed hope that business would agree to take on the relevant obligations. The October 23 decision on the quota is already an effective measure, whereas the model proposed by Koretsky remains a stated idea, not an approved mechanism.
