KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that the military had asked for an additional 450,000-500,000 people to be mobilised into the army, but that a final decision had not been taken.
The Ukrainian leader told a press conference in Kyiv that top military and government officials were due to discuss “this very sensitive issue of mobilisation” and that parliament would then consider it.
Zelenskiy said that conducting a mobilisation at such a scale would require additional financing.
“Their view was… they proposed mobilising an additional 450,000-500,000 people. This is a very serious number,” Zelenskiy said.
“I said that I would need more arguments to support this move. Because first of all, its a question of people, secondly, it’s a question of fairness, it’s a question of defence capability, and its a question of finances.”
Zelenskiy said that an additional 500 billion hryvnias ($13.5 billion) in financing would be required to support the mobilisation if the decision would be taken.
Former defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said last summer that about 1 million people was engaged in Ukraine’s security and defence sector.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Max Hunder and Olena Harmash; editing by Tom Balmforth and Alex Richardson)
