Foreign Residents and Compulsory Service: Ukraine, International Law, and the Limits of Wartime Obligation

Thursday 29 January 2026

Reports circulating in late January 2026 suggest that Ukraine’s senior military leadership has been discussing a proposal that would represent a significant departure from established practice in European states. According to these reports, foreign nationals lawfully resident in Ukraine, particularly men of military age holding residence permits, might in future be required to perform compulsory military service, potentially within a distinct international or foreign-resident unit, as a condition of maintaining their right to remain in the country. While the proposal has not been formally adopted and may yet remain purely hypothetical, its mere discussion is revealing. It illustrates the degree of strain imposed upon Ukraine by a protracted war of national survival, and it raises far-reaching questions about state sovereignty, civic obligation, international law and Ukraine’s relationship with the outside world.

Ukraine is no stranger to the mobilisation of foreigners. Since 2014, and especially since the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, thousands of foreign volunteers have joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces, most prominently through the International Legion. Their service, however, has been explicitly voluntary. What is now being contemplated is not an expansion of volunteer pathways, but the extension of compulsory military obligations to individuals who are not Ukrainian citizens, but who have chosen to live and work on Ukrainian territory.

At the level of domestic policy, the attraction of such a measure is obvious. Ukraine faces persistent manpower shortages, exacerbated by casualties, war fatigue and the emigration of parts of the civilian population. Foreign residents often occupy a legal and social position that is neither wholly external nor fully integrated. They benefit from the protection of the Ukrainian state, participate in its economy, and reside within a society under existential threat. In such circumstances, it is tempting for policymakers to argue that residence, not nationality, should be the decisive criterion for sharing the burdens of defence.

Yet this argument cuts against deeply entrenched assumptions in both domestic and international legal orders. Conscription has traditionally been understood as one of the defining obligations of citizenship. It is part of a broader social contract in which political rights, civic participation and legal protection are balanced by duties owed to the state. Foreign residents, by contrast, generally lack political rights and are subject to removal from the territory. To impose upon them the gravest of civic obligations, namely the duty to fight and potentially to die for the state, risks severing the conceptual link between obligation and membership that underpins modern constitutional orders.

The international legal implications are no less complex. International human rights law does not prohibit conscription as such. Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, for example, explicitly excludes military service and service exacted in cases of emergency or calamity threatening the life of the nation from the prohibition on forced labour. Similarly, Article 8 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopts an equivalent formulation. These provisions, however, were drafted against the background assumption that compulsory service would apply primarily, if not exclusively, to citizens.

When compulsory service is extended to non-citizens, additional human rights concerns arise. Foreign residents may have stronger claims to protection of freedom of conscience, particularly where they have no meaningful political voice in the state that compels their service. Procedural safeguards become crucial. Any system that penalises refusal with detention, expulsion under duress, or deprivation of legal status would be scrutinised closely under international human rights standards, especially where individuals face a genuine risk of death or serious injury in combat operations.

International humanitarian law further complicates the picture. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from compelling protected persons to serve in its armed forces. While Ukraine is not an occupying power in relation to her own territory, the underlying principle is instructive. International law has long regarded the forced participation of civilians in hostilities as an exceptional and morally hazardous practice. If foreign residents were conscripted and deployed in frontline roles, Ukraine would need to demonstrate that such individuals were fully integrated into its armed forces, subject to the same protections, training standards and command structures as citizen soldiers, and not treated as expendable auxiliaries.

Comparative practice offers limited comfort to proponents of compulsory service for foreign residents. Many states permit non-citizens to serve in their armed forces, but almost always on a voluntary basis. The United States has long allowed lawful permanent residents to enlist, and has historically linked military service to expedited naturalisation. France, through the Foreign Legion, offers perhaps the most famous example of structured foreign military service, yet the Legion is voluntary and carefully insulated from broader conscription systems. Spain, Belgium and several Nordic states have similarly opened their armed forces to foreign nationals under contractual arrangements, but none imposes compulsory service on resident aliens as a matter of course.

There are historical precedents for more coercive models, but they are rarely cited with approval. Empires and authoritarian regimes have often conscripted subject populations or resident foreigners, particularly in times of total war. These practices are now generally regarded as emblematic of imperial overreach or democratic deficit, rather than as models to be emulated. In contemporary Europe, where residence rights are typically framed in terms of protection rather than obligation, compulsory service for foreign residents would stand out as a marked anomaly.

Diplomatically, the consequences could be significant. Many foreign residents in Ukraine are nationals of allied or partner states whose political support remains vital to Kyiv’s war effort. Even if legal under international law, compulsory service could provoke domestic political controversy in those states, strain consular relations, and complicate Ukraine’s broader diplomatic messaging. Ukraine has consistently framed its war as a defence of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Policies that appear to blur the distinction between voluntary solidarity and coerced participation risk undermining that narrative, particularly in audiences already sensitive to questions of military obligation and state power.

None of this is to deny the severity of Ukraine’s predicament. States fighting for their survival have historically adopted measures that would be unthinkable in peacetime. International law itself recognises a margin of appreciation in situations of public emergency threatening the life of the nation. The critical question is not whether Ukraine may lawfully seek to expand its pool of military manpower, but how it does so, and at what cost to the legal and moral principles that underpin its claim to international support.

If the proposal to conscript foreign residents advances beyond informal discussion, it will require careful legal design, political restraint and transparent justification. Voluntary service linked to clearer pathways to citizenship would sit more comfortably within both comparative practice and international norms. Compulsion, by contrast, would mark a profound redefinition of the relationship between residence, obligation and belonging in wartime Ukraine.

Ukraine’s strength has rested not only on arms, but on the moral clarity of her cause. Preserving that clarity, even under the most extreme pressure, may prove as decisive in the long term as any additional battalion raised under compulsion.