Kiev has lowered standards for its soldiers, allowing conscription of people with various conditions, including HIV and hepatitis
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has amended its requirements for military service, allowing conscription of people with various chronic conditions. The restrictions were lifted off multiple categories, which had been previously exempted from conscription during wartime.
According to the new decree, which entered force in late August, the military can now conscript people with various conditions, including hepatitis’ of different types, HIV without symptoms, clinically-treated tuberculosis, as well as various blood diseases. The new rules also allow conscription of people with “mild short-term manifestations of mental disorders,” as well as “slowly progressing diseases of the central nervous system.”
Apart from lifting the restrictions from the aforementioned groups of would-be conscripts, the military also eased health requirements for servicemen seeking to serve with Ukraine’s elite units, namely airborne and marines forces.
Ukraine launched a nation-wide mobilization early into the conflict with Russia, which broke out in February 2022. In recent months, Kiev has seemingly ramped up its conscription efforts, with multiple videos circulating online showing enlistment officers chasing potential recruits in the streets, physically assaulting them and even threatening them with weaponry.
Kiev’s troops have sustained heavy losses in personnel and hardware amid the ongoing counteroffensive effort against Russian forces, launched in early June. Thus far, the push failed to yield any tangible results, while dozens of Western supplied armor pieces, including German-made Leopard 2 tanks and US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, as well as thousands of servicemen were lost.
