2,000 declared unfit in one unit: a failure at the territorial recruitment center, the military medical commission, or higher?
Military ombudswoman Olha Reshetylova revealed an unprecedented case: thousands of people with medical grounds for exemption have ended up in the army — and no one so far can say where exactly the system broke down.
By Tetiana Suchkova-Ladik
April 5, 2026 · 2 min read
About 2,000 people who likely should not have been mobilized for health reasons were found in one Ukrainian military unit. Military ombudswoman Olha Reshetylova confirmed this fact in an interview with RBC-Ukraine. These are not isolated mistakes — this is a systemic failure with four possible points of responsibility.
Where it failed
The mobilization chain in Ukraine is sequential: the Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) summons a person, the military medical commission (MMC) assesses fitness, after which the person is sent to the unit. According to Reshetylova, investigative actions are now aimed at establishing the specific point of failure.
“We need to fully study the issue of how this happened, at which stage this mass violation occurred. Was it at the TRC stage, the MMC, or already at the military unit, or was the decision made somewhere higher up?”
Olha Reshetylova, military ombudswoman, interview with RBC-Ukraine
Representatives of the Ministry of Defense and the Land Forces Command were involved in the inspection. The ombudswoman did not disclose the unit's name.
Scale — not an exception, but a symptom
2,000 people in one place is not a statistical error. For comparison: an average Ukrainian Ground Forces brigade numbers 3,000–5,000 servicemembers. If half of a formation consists of people who should not have been taken for medical reasons, that's a question not just about paperwork but about the combat readiness of the unit.
The MMC's decision is recorded in the personal file and must be stored in the electronic system “Reserve+”. Thus, data on unfitness should have been technically available at every stage. The fact that 2,000 people passed through the entire chain despite this means either mass disregard of the records or their absence.
Reaction: there is an inspection, but no mechanism
The Office of the Military Ombudswoman has proposed amending the rules for undergoing the MMC. Separately, Reshetylova noted that the Ministry of Defense's Health Department was working on adjusting Order No. 402 — the list of diseases that determine unfitness. However, these changes have not yet come into force, and the current inspection has no publicly announced completion deadlines or responsible persons.
In fact, at present there is a fact of a violation and a process of clarification — but there is neither public accountability nor a clear mechanism that would prevent the same from happening in another unit.
If the inspection establishes that the failure occurred at the MMC level or higher — and not simply due to an error by a particular TRC officer — will this be grounds for a systemic audit of all units, not just one?
