President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced plans to boost military pay, revise service contracts and introduce a phased discharge system for long-serving personnel, with measures due to begin in June. The reforms are intended to ease severe manpower shortages after more than four years of full-scale war with Russia.
Zelenskyy said the first steps, to be implemented in June, will include higher salaries for soldiers, sergeants and commanders. Infantry troops would see monthly pay increased to 250,000–400,000 hryvnias ($5,700–$9,000), compared with a current maximum of about 170,000 hryvnias for personnel deployed at the front or behind enemy lines for 30 days. Non-combat staff would receive raises to about 20,000–30,000 hryvnias per month.
He also announced a phased discharge for troops mobilized early in the war, using clear time-based criteria that would effectively end the current system of open-ended contracts. Zelenskyy did not provide specific demobilization timelines, saying details are still being finalized.
Recruitment has shifted since the opening months of Russia’s 2022 invasion, when hundreds of thousands volunteered; new recruits now are mostly conscripts. The military has faced criticism for heavy-handed conscription practices, including reports of forced detentions, street abductions and so-called “busification,” in which military-age men are rounded up in public and taken directly to enlistment centers. Absences without leave are widespread, and corruption enables some wealthy or connected individuals to evade service.
In other developments, Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces struck an oil terminal in the Russian Black Sea port of Tuapse on Friday. Local Russian officials confirmed the attack, saying it caused a fire but no casualties. The facility was reportedly hit three times last month. Regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev said a fire at the city’s oil refinery had been extinguished on Thursday, hours before the latest strike.
Russia has stepped up aerial and drone attacks on Ukrainian territory. More than 50 drones were launched at the western city of Ternopil on Friday, wounding at least 10 people, Mayor Serhii Nadal said. Overnight strikes in the southern Odesa region damaged two multi-story residential buildings and port infrastructure; Ukraine’s Emergency Service reported an apartment destroyed in a 16-story building and fires on the upper floors of another high-rise. Zelenskyy said additional overnight attacks on Kryvyi Rih and in the Kharkiv region damaged railway infrastructure.
Zelenskyy added that Ukrainian drone attacks have caused at least $7 billion (about €6 billion) in damage to Russia’s oil industry so far this year, significantly reducing Russian oil revenues, a key funding source for the war.
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko