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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The defense-tech community is actively discussing government plans to change the rules for reserving workers from mobilization. The proposal concerns a limit of “no more than 85%” for defense-industrial enterprises that the Ministry of Defense has identified as critically important.
On 13 October the Cabinet approved a resolution “On certain issues of organizing the reservation of conscripts for the period of mobilization and wartime.” The percentage figures were given five days for revision.
At first there was the idea to exclude employees with deferments from the quota, but that was later abandoned. The restriction of “no more than 85%” for critically important defense-industry enterprises so far remains in the text.
The Cabinet also plans to create a Coordination Center made up of representatives from the Security Service, the Main Intelligence Directorate, the Foreign Intelligence Service and the National Police, which will determine the criticality of enterprises.
According to the Technological Forces of Ukraine, the changes could affect more than 900 companies and more than 300 thousand workers — that is the current size of Ukraine’s defense industry. LB.ua collected current comments from the Ministry of Defense, relevant associations and defense company representatives on the matter.
Position of the associations and manufacturers
On 9 October Igor Fedirko, CEO of the Ukrainian Arms Council, first raised the issue.
“According to my sources, a draft resolution was submitted to the Ministry of Defense for approval. It proposes to set a limit of ‘no more than 85%’ for defense-industry enterprises that the Ministry of Defense has determined to be critically important for the functioning of the economy,” he wrote.
Igor Fedirko
Fedirko noted that, according to the Arms Council’s estimate, defense-industry workers account for no more than 10% of all reserved workers in the country.
“These are people whose work directly affects the supply of the military: engineers, technologists, equipment operators, assembly specialists, testing and repair specialists,” Fedirko said.
At the same time he pointed to a personnel shortage in the sector, while the Ministry of Economy proposes “to scale up defense production and at the same time reduce the ability to reserve its workers.”
“Producers already need new people. And they are being asked to choose who from their existing team will be left without reservation,” wrote the head of the Ukrainian Arms Council.
Fedirko emphasized that the Ministry of Defense has already reviewed the criticality status of enterprises, 14% of which did not confirm it.
“So the verification mechanism works. If there are abuses — specific enterprises and specific grounds for reservation need to be checked,” he concluded.
The Technological Forces of Ukraine stated that reservation of defense-industry workers should remain at the level of 100%.
According to association representatives, a decision to set 85% creates a direct threat to weapons production and the fulfillment of defense orders.
Drone interceptor Sting.
“The consequence — contract delays and weapons that the military will not receive on time,” the Technological Forces wrote in a post on their Facebook page.
The association also said there are a number of other provisions that were not publicly discussed. For example, the 85% quota would not be applied at once: “At an enterprise with one thousand conscripts, 150 people immediately lose their reservation. After their mobilization the limit is breached again — and someone else among the remaining employees will have to be unreserved. The process repeats until there is no one left at the enterprise.”
In addition, according to the Technological Forces, on the recommendation of the proposed Coordination Center at the Cabinet, an enterprise could be stripped of its critically important status and therefore would not receive a reservation limit above 50%.
Any production expansion would require reapplying to the Coordination Center for the increased number of employees to be included in the same quota.
“Defense-industry enterprises already underwent the criticality confirmation cycle this summer. Having to go through it again, on tight deadlines and through a new body — means suspending the systematic work of the sector,” the Technological Forces said. They stressed that confirmation of critical status should remain with the Ministry of Defense.
Yaroslav Filimonov, CEO of KVERTUS, which develops electronic warfare systems for protection against UAVs, said that in 2024 the Ministry of Economy defended 100% reservation because stability of weapons output was a priority: “Does the military no longer need that much weapons? Our orders and the months-long waiting list indicate the opposite.”
His company now plans to ramp up production and localize component manufacturing. But without qualified specialists you cannot start the equipment. They are searched for months, then trained and adapted. Now there is the added risk of losing those who already work.
“It is time for the government to decide: are we increasing weapons output or forcing the defense industry to play ‘The Hunger Games’ for its own personnel? The front needs electronic warfare systems and weapons, not bureaucratic experiments,” the company head wrote on his Facebook page.
Yaroslav Filimonov
Oleksii Babyenko, CEO of VYRIY Industries, a manufacturer of drones and drone components, said in his post: “Limiting reservation is strengthening a unit’s personnel at the cost of reducing weapons supply for them.”
He reminded that 95% of the strikes Ukraine delivers to the enemy are carried out with domestically produced means. According to Babyenko, the new rules could halt production scaling, delay development of new solutions, and delay delivery of effective means to the front.
Oleksii Babyenko
Victoria Kulchytska, commercial director of the Ukrainian-British defense-tech company Trypillian, told RBC-Ukraine that it is also unknown by what principle companies should decide which employees are more important — the engineer who designs the product or the specialist who manufactures and tests it. In her view, losing 15% of employees does not mean production will drop by only 15%: if a critical specialist drops out of the production chain, the entire process can stop.
Representatives of the defense association NAUDI believe such changes will affect production rates: “While a new employee acquires qualifications, their productivity is lower, and experienced colleagues spend time training them. This raises the cost price of products.”
What the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Economy say
On 10 October Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Yevhenii Khmara said during a meeting with journalists that the ministry’s position is to reserve defense-industry workers as much as possible.
“If enterprises are tasked with scaling up production of systems critical for the front and the state gives them contracts, it must create conditions for fulfilling those contracts,” the head of the ministry said.
At the same time, he emphasized, the system must take into account an enterprise’s real contribution to supplying the Defense Forces and be fair.
However, the minister did not specify what exactly that means or how it will be measured.
Yevhenii Khmara
LB.ua sent a request to the Ministry of Defense asking for clarification: whether a draft resolution was submitted to the ministry and what position it provided, how many defense-industry enterprises have critically important status and how many workers are reserved at them, how many enterprises did not confirm this status during the last review, whether cases of reservation abuse were recorded, how the ministry assesses the impact of lowering the limit to 85% on fulfillment of defense contracts, and whether the Ministry of Defense has its own proposals to improve the reservation system.
There has been no public communication from the Ministry of Economy and Environment regarding this proposal. MP Oleksandr Fedienko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, says he sent a parliamentary inquiry to the ministry. However, he told LB.ua that as of 15 October he had not received a response.
LB.ua also addressed the Ministry of Economy with a request about which specific enterprises the restriction would apply to, the rationale for the exact 85%, whether the ministry assessed the proposed changes’ impact on fulfillment of existing defense contracts, in particular regarding the shortage of engineers, technologists and equipment operators, whether the ministry received remarks from Ministry of Defense colleagues following Khmara’s statement, whether they plan to revise the figure, and whether there will be any transition period or exceptions for specific enterprises.
As of 15 October we have not received answers from either ministry. We will publish them when we receive them.
NRK Vepr
The government has not yet approved final limits: the resolution was adopted with one day for refinement, and five days for the percentage figures. The restriction applies not only to the defense industry: according to MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak, 85% is being proposed for defense-industry and energy companies, and 60% for district heating and water utilities. The text of the resolution as of 15 October has not been published, and the Ministry of Economy has not provided official explanations for the rationale behind the new limits.
Today members of the Verkhovna Rada spoke out against creating the Coordination Center and called on the government to resume consultations on changes to the reservation rules.
“Ronald Reagan once rightly noted that government reminds him of a small child. Good appetite and poor control. We, representatives of various parliamentary factions and groups, demand the resumption of full parliamentary oversight over an extremely important and highly sensitive sector — the rules for reservation from mobilization for critically important enterprises,” said in a joint statement MP Serhii Rakhmanin of the Holos faction.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Бронювання працівників ОПК: галузь називає пропоновані 85 загрозливими. Міністерства поки не дають пояснень". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: LB.ua.
