Requests to keep full staff of specialists will be forwarded for filtering to a new body of 17 officials
The government’s mobilization registration policy is undergoing another review aimed at reducing the categories of citizens with guaranteed protection from conscription. The Cabinet of Ministers has prepared a draft of an updated resolution that cancels one-hundred-percent automatic reservation for specialists in strategic economic sectors. Member of Parliament Yaroslav Zheleznyak reported on these regulatory developments.
According to government plans, the baseline limit for defense-industrial complex enterprises and the energy sector is set at 95 percent of personnel. The desire to retain the remaining five percent of critical workers will now require going through a separate multi-stage bureaucratic procedure.
Coordination center of seventeen agencies
Enterprises will be able to receive the full 100 percent quota only by decision of the newly established Coordination Center under the government. The collegial body will include seventeen representatives, and the chairmanship will be shared between the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Defence.
Specialized structures of the security sector, including the Security Service of Ukraine, the Main Directorate of Intelligence, the Foreign Intelligence Service, and the National Police, will be involved in evaluating the annual justifications. Such an interagency sieve is designed to thoroughly filter each individual application from critical enterprises.
Compromise after weapon makers’ warning
Initial plans by officials envisaged a more significant reduction of the protective threshold to 85 percent, which drew sharp criticism from weapons manufacturers. Executive Director of the Ukrainian Council of Weapon Makers Ihor Fedirko noted that the project was sent for approval to the Ministry of Defence following industry warnings about the risks of a complete production shutdown.
Entrepreneurs emphasized the lack of professional consultations before the attempt to cut protected personnel. The current 95 percent has become a forced compromise between the pressure of military staffing and real threats to the production of defense products.
State statistics and local abuses
Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi argued the need to revise the rules by citing numerous facts of abuse during the processing of deferrals. According to official data, as of September 2026, about 1.4 million people had reserved status in Ukraine, concentrated mainly in the processing industry, transport, logistics, trade, energy, and the agricultural sector.
At the same time, law enforcement officers are recording systemic manipulations from the other side of the process, driven by the pursuit of staffing targets. In particular, the State Bureau of Investigation reported the exposure of an acting head of a district Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast during the Honest Conscription operation.
According to SBI investigators, the major entered false information into the Oberig electronic register, fictitiously processing the military service of two men who were actually at home. The official is incriminated with unauthorized alteration of data in automated systems under Part 1 of Article 362 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, demonstrating the flip side of administrative pressure on the registration system.
Illustrative photo: Кабінет Міністрів України / CC BY 4.0
