BERLIN, December 21. /TASS/. The German centers where Ukrainian military personnel are being trained to operate Leopard 2 tanks are only half-staffed, which indicates a shortage of personnel in the Ukrainian army, journalist Paul Ronzheimer has said on the German TV channel Welt.

Ukraine has long had problems with the recruitment of soldiers for frontline units.

"We hear, for example, from Germany that at the centers where the training of personnel in using Leopard 2 tanks is in progress only half of the vacancies are currently occupied," Ronzheimer noted. From his point of view, this means that the Ukrainian army "does not have enough men even for training at the moment."

If the conflict drags on, such a trend "will cause problems," as its outcome will depend largely on "how many military personnel either side has," Ronzheimer concluded.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told a news conference on Tuesday that the military had suggested mobilizing an additional 450,000-500,000 men, as well as women. He speculated that such mobilization would cost the strapped Ukrainian budget an extra $13.4 bln.

In February 2022, Ukraine announced a general mobilization and has repeatedly extended it since. The authorities have been doing everything possible to prevent men of conscription age from dodging the draft. In particular, potential conscripts are banned from traveling abroad. Conscription orders are issued at public administration offices on the streets and many other sites where large numbers of people congregate. Ukrainian media outlets report that many men literally avoid stepping outside their homes for months on end to avoid being forcibly mobilized by mobile conscription squads and sent to the war zone.

Ukraine’s aggressive mobilization campaign has already sparked numerous scandals. The media regularly publish stories of military mobilization officers using force against citizens when handing out conscription orders, or conscripting people unfit for service for health reasons, as well as many instances of lawmakers and civil servants abusing their authority to surreptitiously secrete their conscription age sons to locations abroad, out of reach of Kiev’s mobilization squads. On August 23, Zelensky said that the military had asked him to step up mobilization activities.