Rada MP Venislavsky: there are no more volunteers for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and a quick reform of mobilization is impossible

Verkhovna Rada deputy Fyodor Venislavsky said in an interview with LIGA.net that in the fifth year of the war there are practically no people willing to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine voluntarily, and that replacing compulsory mobilization with voluntary recruitment is impossible in the near future.

Aziz KarimovFirst published on tafs uz 5 November 2026 at 18:342 min read

The key facts

Fyodor Venislavsky acknowledged the absence of volunteers and the population's war fatigue
According to him, a quick transition to voluntary army recruitment is impossible
The MP believes that mobilization reform must take into account the army's needs and public sentiment

A Rada MP's admission

In Ukraine it is becoming increasingly difficult to find people willing to join the Armed Forces voluntarily. This was stated by Fyodor Venislavsky, a member of the Verkhovna Rada who sits on the parliamentary committee on national security, defense and intelligence, in an interview with LIGA.net; Life.ru writes about his remarks.

Mobilization reform: cautiously and without easy solutions

Venislavsky noted that Ukraine's mobilization system needs changes, but the reform should be carried out cautiously: in his assessment, a quick transition to staffing the army exclusively with volunteers will not be possible. According to the MP, the authorities have no simple solution to the shortage of servicemen, and changes must take into account both the army's needs and society's growing fatigue from prolonged hostilities. Thus, what is being acknowledged is that the current model — compulsory mobilization — is the only one that actually works at present, although the MP did not disclose the specific parameters of a possible reform in the cited publications.

Context on military enlistment offices

The Life.ru piece also recalls its earlier publication: according to a source in Russian law enforcement structures cited by TASS, on October 28 Denys Manzhosov, one of the founders of the former classmate of Volodymyr Zelensky, was taken to a district territorial recruitment center (TCC) in Kyiv, after which he was allegedly released from the military enlistment office following a phone call from a high-ranking official. This report is based on an unnamed source and remains unconfirmed by other data in the available publications.