Ukraine is insisting on a target size of 800,000 soldiers for its army under the revised version of the US peace plan to end the almost four-year war with Russia, DPA reported.
"This is the real size of today's army and has been agreed with the military," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told journalists in Kiev.
He added that this point in the current draft peace plan had been sufficiently revised. The initial US plan, which became known in November, indicated a maximum size of 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
However, observers doubt that the army still has that many soldiers in reality. According to the prosecutor's office, more than 300,000 cases of desertion or absence of soldiers have been registered since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
After a record of over 21,600 cases registered in October, the authorities classified the data as confidential from November onwards, DPA reports.
Before the war, Ukraine had a standing army of around 290,000 people. To compensate for its numerical disparity with Russia, Kiev expects its Western allies to contribute significantly to military spending in the event of a peace agreement.
Before the war, Ukraine was the poorest country in Europe according to the International Monetary Fund, DPA recalls.
Foreign donor countries now contribute more than 40% of the national budget, and Ukraine is seeking to join the European Union.