Zaluzhnyi: Soviet warfare methods have driven Ukraine’s mobilization into a dead end

Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, argued that the military must adopt new forms of warfare built around modern technology before changing its force structure and approach to mobilization.

“It was the desire to liberate occupied territories and hold them using Soviet methods and strategies, only with new weapons, that drove mobilization into a dead end,” Zaluzhnyi wrote.

The former commander-in-chief said that “mobilization offered only one chance” and that “fewer and fewer people were willing to take it.”

“Because we cannot withstand a war of machines against a vast Soviet country where people are effectively turned into machines and sent to fight real machines,” he stressed.

Recognizing technology as a new weapon, Zaluzhnyi wrote, requires taking into account the patterns in the development of military art and using them to create new forms and methods of employing it. Only then should the structure of the Armed Forces that employ this new weapon be changed.

“This is precisely where mobilization fits in as part of a new strategy based on new weapons and on genuinely new, rather than Soviet, forms and methods of their use,” the former commander-in-chief wrote.

Only this approach, Zaluzhnyi argued, can improve mobilization and, most importantly, exert pressure on the enemy and gain an advantage.

“These changes are absolutely irreversible and affect warfare at every level: tactical, operational and strategic, as well as the development of the defense-industrial complex,” he stressed.

Zaluzhnyi also said doctrine is the foundation of systematic pressure on the enemy and that it “shapes a strategy focused solely on future victory.”

In his column, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and former Armed Forces commander-in-chief also explained why the war in Ukraine is no longer a drone war.

In July, former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the Defense Ministry planned to present a mobilization reform in July 2026, launch it in August and have it significantly change the situation with military recruitment by September.

On July 16, during a briefing on the results of his tenure as defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov said the mobilization issue could not be resolved without a new social contract and real changes in the military.