Ananke Group

In June, the Ukrainian army began offering new contracts, an experiment in reforming mobilization under former Defense Minister Fedorov. Infantry were promised about ten times the average wage. More importantly, service would end after 10 to 24 months rather than drag on until a demobilization nobody can date. Four months later, according to Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliament’s defense committee, only 8,600 people had signed, and that number includes soldiers already serving. Like the even more lucrative “youth contracts” last year, the “Fedorov contracts” have failed to attract any significant number of volunteers. Russia, meanwhile, has not launched the new mobilization wave so many predicted after the Duma elections, apparently because there has been no significant drop in the number of volunteers so far. Why comparable material incentives have worked far better for Russia than for Ukraine is a key question of this war. I argue that the main reason is not an imbalance of resources but an imbalance of state capacity, and of how much people trust the order their states have established. The deepening crisis of the Ukrainian state, which this war is supposedly about, may be the single most important factor deciding its outcome.