The West’s proxy conflict against Russia is fast draining Ukraine of its workforce.
Not only is the Kiev regime's military facing manpower shortages due to battlefield losses, the bite is being felt in the economy as well.
Industrial facilities, mines and building sites are all struggling to find enough able-bodied staff.
Kiev hopes to plug recruitment gaps in the military with its new mobilization law that came into effect last month.
The new legislation not only lowers the minimum conscription age from 27 to 25, but incorporates measures allowing the Ukrainian government to press-gang citizens into military service.
As the US and other NATO patrons of the Kiev regime demand they fight “to the last Ukrainian,” millions have fled the country to dodged the draft, while hundreds of thousands more have been killed on the front lines.
Keeping Ukraine’s economy afloat with such a shortage of manpower is a another challenge altogether.
The workforce has shrunk by some 27 percent since the Ukraine conflict escalated, Bloomberg quoted Ukrainian Deputy Central Bank Governor Sergiy Nikolaychuk as saying.
The news site said that an estimated over 6 million people had fled Ukraine. Men have also avoided conscription by working by working on the informal labor market, wary of the new requirement for employers to provide their details to army recruiters.
Billions-worth of weapons funneled to Ukraine cannot compensate for finite human resources. The Western press has acknowledged that Ukraine's main weakness in the combat zone is an acute shortage of soldiers. Now it is increasingly noting the yawning gaps in the country's labor force.
The Ukrainian unit of steel and mining conglomerate Metinvest BV has been struggled to fill 4,000 vacancies, Bloomberg reported. The metro system in the capital Kiev will reportedly soon be running fewer trains due to a “significant deficit” of workers.
The shrinking workforce has resulted in women increasingly being hired for jobs that used to be predominantly held by men, including in mining. Some businesses may even be forced to stop production due to manpower shortages.
In May, the chief executive of Ukraine's largest mining and smelting plant ArcelorMittal Krivoy Rog told the Financial Times that if Ukrainian authorities continue to mobilize, "we will not have enough [staff] to operate. We are talking here about the existence of the company."
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukraine is running critically low on personnel. In late April, then-Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the Ukrainian Army’s losses stood at almost half a million soldiers.