A Servant of the People MP said that Ukraine has enough population to keep fighting for another 10 years

Ukraine has enough human resources to continue the war for another 10 years.

This was stated by Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of parliament from the Servant of the People party and head of the Verkhovna Rada’s foreign affairs committee, in a comment to the British outlet The Independent.

“People see army service as a one-way ticket because they know nothing about rotation. If they knew they would fight for only one year and then be able to rest, they would be more willing to join the army. This is a psychological issue, because if you look at overall manpower, we have enough human resources to keep fighting for 10 years and even longer. The main problem is how to manage these resources and how to create psychological incentives, because when you see an army of draft evaders, you yourself do not want to fight,” Merezhko said.

The article also cites the view of an ordinary Ukrainian man evading service.

“At the beginning of the war, I went to the enlistment office myself. Back then everyone was going and saying: ‘Take us!’ I was the same. They told me: ‘We don’t need you yet, go home, we’ll call you.’ Later I saw everything that was happening: injustice, many people buying their way out of the army and untouchables, while others were being stuffed into minibuses despite being sick. Now my father is ill, and I have to take care of him. If I lose an arm or a leg, I won’t be able to help anyone anymore. But if the Russians are again near Kyiv and everyone is serving, then I will go too,” said 37-year-old Denys.

After The Independent published the piece, MP Maksym Buzhansky asked whether Merezhko himself was ready to go to the front.

“It would be fair and honest if MP Merezhko immediately specified how many of those ten years he personally intends to fight. Just so he does not look as much like an idiot as he usually does,” Buzhansky wrote on his Telegram channel.

Earlier, military ombudsman Olha Reshetylova suggested that under the pretext of introducing fixed terms of service, mobilization in Ukraine could be tightened.

Meanwhile, in March, media reported that European politicians had asked Kyiv to keep fighting for about two more years. In return, Europeans allegedly promised Volodymyr Zelensky more funding.