MOSCOW, November 12. /TASS/. Executives of Ukraine’s vital enterprises, including those in the defense sector, have to hide their male employees from mobilization to keep production going, a Ukrainian lawmaker said.

The Ukrainian government has suspended a number of provisions that protect employees at vitally important enterprises from being called up to the army. The suspension will be effective until November 15, when an audit to decide which enterprises are indeed critical is over. This decision was prompted by Zelensky’s anger over the fact that some 1.5 million men are spared from being mobilized.

"I am sure that many know that the mechanism of granting exemption from army service has been suspended for the period of this check <…>. Military recruitment offices have already begun to call around to the administrations of enterprises saying that the exemption term for their employees is expiring on November 14 <…>," Alexander Fediyenko, a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, or national parliament, wrote on his Telegram channel.

"I have already received an appeal from employees of a grain silo and a defense enterprise, which, although being critical facilities, have already mobilized their workers. In some cases, executives have to fire workers or somehow hide them so as not to halt the enterprise’s operation," he noted.

On November 5, Fediyenko said that the authorities had drawn a list of companies that would lose their status as critically important facilities after the check and, hence, their employees would be stripped of exemptions from being drafted to the army.

General mobilization was announced in Ukraine in February 2022 and has been extended several times since, with the authorities doing everything possible so that draft-age men cannot evade military service. However, issues of granting exemptions from military service have not yet been settled. As a result, many industrial enterprises complain about personnel shortages, and the same problem haunts public transport and utility services. Executives are trying to resolve this problem by hiring women to replace the mobilized men. According to the Ukrainian media, understaffing has reached a record-high 40% in some sectors.