Cancellation of Reservation of Employees in Ukraine: Who Cancels It, When and What Next

Cancellation of employee reservation means that a reserved employee loses the deferment granted through reservation. The grounds are listed in para. 31 of the Reservation Procedure, approved by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 76 of January 27, 2023. There are currently seventeen.

A reservation can be canceled in two ways. First, the employer submits an application in Diia through the “Cancellation of Employee Reservation” service, which takes up to one day to process. Second, cancellation occurs without an application: reservations are canceled automatically when the enterprise no longer qualifies as critically important because its status has been revoked or has expired. The Procedure does not name the territorial recruitment center (TCC) among those authorized to cancel reservations.

Employers most often encounter cancellation in three situations: a reserved employee is dismissed, the number of reserved employees exceeds the limit, or a reservation disappears even though no one submitted an application.

Cancellation of reservation for employees liable for military service goes by various names in everyday language: cancellation of employee reservation, dereservation, or “removing a reservation.” Similar terms, however, describe three different situations:

• Cancellation means that a particular employee loses their deferment. This is the subject of this article;

• Expiration has no separate procedure: it is the first ground for cancellation, and the deferment is canceled as soon as the period for which it was granted ends;

• Government cancellation of reservations is how news reports describe changes to the rules for everyone. The employer takes no action in this situation, and this article does not cover it.

Below, we explain who cancels reservations and on what grounds, how to apply in Diia, the applicable deadlines, and what happens next to the employee and the limit.

Who Cancels an Employee’s Reservation and in What Circumstances

In most cases, the employer cancels the reservation. Older publications describe paper submissions to the Ministry of Economy or the TCC, but the current Procedure provides no such route.

A paper process previously existed under Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 45 of February 4, 2015. It was used to reserve employees of government authorities and enterprises with mobilization assignments. Reservations under that process have been suspended since May 2025.

To cancel such a reservation, the employee’s deferment certificate was collected, marked as canceled, and sent to the TCC by registered mail together with a cancellation notice. If your employee still has a paper certificate issued under Resolution No. 45, check their status in Reserve+ and, if necessary, reserve the employee through Diia.

Grounds for Cancellation of Employee Reservation: The Complete List

The same para. 31 of the Procedure provides the complete list. The grounds are grouped according to what has happened at the employer. Each number refers to the corresponding ground in para. 31 as in effect in November 2026.

If you have seen lists of five, seven, nine, or ten grounds elsewhere, those are older versions: the list has been expanded several times since then.

For a typical critically important enterprise, six grounds have practical relevance: expiration (1), loss of status (3), dismissal (5), suspension of an employment contract (6), salary (12), and exceeding the limit (15). In addition, the head of the enterprise has the right to cancel a reservation through their own submission (8).

How to Cancel Employee Reservations in Diia: Step by Step

The steps below follow Diia’s own instructions on the service page:

1. Under business services, find “Reservation,” then “Cancellation of Employee Reservation.” Next, click “Submit an Application.”

2. Sign in using the legal entity’s electronic signature.

3. Add the employees, providing each person’s last name, first name, patronymic, date of birth, and tax number or passport details. The Procedure also requires you to specify the reason for cancellation.

4. The system will generate an application. Review and sign it. If an authorized representative handles the submission, the head of the enterprise or its authorized signatory signs the application.

5. You can then track the status in your account. The result will be emailed to you and displayed in the “Please Note” section.

What the System Checks

The system will cancel a reservation on application only if the employee actually works for the enterprise submitting the application and was reserved through that enterprise.

Whose Reservation Cannot Be Canceled

Diia lists three situations: the employee does not work for you, the employee was not reserved through your company, or the register of persons liable for military service contains no information about the employee.

The Result

A separate status is issued for each employee: “canceled” or “not canceled,” with an explanation. The employee will see the updated reservation status in their Reserve+ account.

Does the service show the wrong number of employees? According to Diia, the register is still awaiting confirmation from the Pension Fund of Ukraine. Submit a notification of changes in employment relationships, then wait up to two days.

Cancellation of Reservation Upon Dismissal, Transfer, or Suspension of an Employment Contract

Dismissal

Dismissal is a ground for cancellation. A reservation is tied to the employer: it does not transfer to a new workplace. If the new employer is itself eligible to reserve employees, it submits the employee for reservation anew.

In practice, mistakes are easy to make here. The system cancels reservations on application only for employees who still have an employment relationship with the enterprise. Once the dismissal appears in the registers, an application will no longer help: Diia expressly lists these employees among those whose reservations cannot be canceled through the service. Therefore, if you want to cancel a reservation by application, submit it while the employee is still on staff.

Consider a reserved engineer whose dismissal takes effect on Friday. The enterprise’s limit is twenty, twenty employees are reserved, and a new employee who needs a reservation is already lined up to take the engineer’s place.

If the application is submitted on Thursday while the engineer is still on staff, the reservation is canceled within a day, a place becomes available, and an application for the new employee can be submitted as soon as that employee appears in the register.

If nothing is submitted, Diia will no longer accept the application after the dismissal, and the enterprise has no control over when a place within the limit becomes available. That is why cancellation upon dismissal should be planned together with the dismissal order, rather than afterward.

The Procedure does not expressly state what happens to such a reservation afterward: when and how it disappears from the register and frees up a place within the limit. It is therefore better to avoid this situation by applying before dismissal. If you miss that opportunity, check the status through the “Employee Information from the Register of Persons Liable for Military Service” service and, if necessary, contact the authority that granted the enterprise its status.

Transfer to Another Position

Has an employee been dismissed from one position and immediately appointed to another while remaining with the same company? The reservation remains in effect: the Procedure expressly provides this exception. An application is needed only if the head of the enterprise decides that the employee no longer needs the deferment.

Suspension of an Employment Contract

For critically important enterprises, suspension of an employment contract is a separate ground for cancellation. The deferment is tied to employment, and while the contract is suspended, there is no basis for it.

How to document the dismissal or suspension of the contract itself is an employment law issue beyond the scope of this article.

Do you need professional help with this matter?

Submit a request, and we will find the optimal solution for your situation.

Order a service

How Long Cancellation of Reservation Takes: Deadlines

Ministry of Defense decisions increasing the limit that were adopted before December 9, 2025, remain valid no later than December 8, 2026. Later decisions remain valid until the date specified in the decision itself. When that period expires, the same five-business-day deadline applies to cancellation of reservations above the limit.

About the “five days.” Previously, the head of a critically important enterprise could submit cancellation applications no more than once every five calendar days. In the winter of 2025–2026, this waiting period was temporarily lifted until February 1, 2026, which is why publications from that period described it as abolished.

The restriction was permanently removed by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 862 of July 1, 2026. Since July 3, 2026, applications can be submitted without a waiting period.

When the reservation ceases to be valid. The Procedure provides no separate interval between the decision and loss of the deferment: cancellation and transfer to general military registration occur simultaneously in the register. For the employer, this means that as soon as the result shows “canceled,” the employee no longer has a deferment. The updated status may appear in Reserve+ a little later, but that does not affect the deferment.

What Happens After Cancellation of Reservation

To the Employee

The employee is removed from special military registration and placed on general military registration. They no longer have a deferment and can be called up like anyone else without one. Their status in Reserve+ is updated. If eligible for another deferment, the employee must obtain it independently.

The Employer’s Obligations Toward the TCC

After cancellation, the Reservation Procedure does not require the employer to notify the TCC separately of the cancellation itself, collect documents from the employee, or forward them: registration is updated through the register. This does not remove the company’s general military recordkeeping obligations. These are covered in our article on military recordkeeping after reservation.

To the Limit

A place becomes available: a canceled reservation no longer counts toward the number of reserved employees. However, if the employee remains on staff, they still count toward the number of employees liable for military service used to calculate the limit.

The general rule allows no more than half of the employees liable for military service to be reserved. For defense and energy enterprises designated critically important by the Ministry of Defense or Ministry of Energy, the limit is 95%, with a higher percentage possible under a separate decision.

Also, an employee who has another deferment or holds a secondary job at another critically important enterprise is counted at only one workplace—the one where they have worked the longest.

An application for another employee can be submitted for the available place. We explain how the limit is calculated in our article on employee reservation quotas.

Can the Employee Be Reserved Again?

Yes, if the reason for cancellation has been resolved. Submit a new application in the same way as the first time. The process is explained step by step in our article on how to reserve employees.

How a repeat reservation of employees differs from an extension is explained in a separate article.

Employer Liability: What Happens If a Reservation Is Not Canceled

The Reservation Procedure does not establish a separate fine specifically for failing to cancel a reservation. There are consequences, however, and they affect the entire enterprise.

• Exceeding the limit. The head of the enterprise must apply to cancel reservations above the limit within 10 business days. If that deadline is missed, exceeding the limit itself becomes a ground for revoking the enterprise’s critically important enterprise status. Resolution No. 692 of May 30, 2026 added this ground to the Criteria and Procedure for Designating Critically Important Enterprises.

• Reserved employees’ salaries. Accruing a salary below the prescribed threshold for a reserved employee is a ground for canceling their deferment. If the enterprise’s status is revoked as a result, it cannot regain that status for at least six months.

• Loss of status means automatic cancellation for all reserved employees at the same time. We explain how to avoid this in our article on how to retain critically important enterprise status.

Failing to cancel one employee’s reservation on time therefore puts everyone’s reservations at risk. For fines generally, see our article on fines for military recordkeeping violations.

The salary threshold is as follows: throughout the deferment period, the employer must accrue to each reserved employee a salary of at least three minimum wages per month—UAH 25,941 in 2026. For enterprises in combat areas, the threshold is lower at 2.5 minimum wages. The requirement does not apply to certain categories, including Diia City residents and certain energy and coal enterprises.

The limit can be exceeded without reserving anyone new. Consider an enterprise with forty employees liable for military service and twenty reserved employees—exactly half. Over a month, eight employees without reservations are dismissed. There are now thirty-two employees liable for military service, the limit is sixteen, and twenty employees remain reserved.

The enterprise has not submitted a single application, yet it exceeds the limit by four. The 10-business-day period starts that day: the head of the enterprise must submit an application to cancel four reservations and must decide whose reservations to cancel.

The limit depends on headcount, so check it after every staffing change, as well as when reserving new employees.

Can the TCC Cancel a Reservation?

No. The Reservation Procedure does not give the TCC this power: a reservation is canceled on application by the head of the enterprise or the government authority through which the employee was reserved, or automatically through the register when grounds for cancellation arise.

If an employee is told that their “reservation has been removed,” the employer should check three things:

1. The employee’s status in Reserve+ and in Diia’s “Employee Information from the Register of Persons Liable for Military Service” service.

2. Whether any grounds have arisen: expiration of the reservation or the enterprise’s status, salary issues, or another deferment.

3. Whether the enterprise’s entry in the Unified List remains valid.

If the reservation is valid in the register, the deferment remains in effect. If it has been canceled, identify and resolve the reason. Challenging the TCC’s actions is a separate topic that this article does not cover.

How We Help With Cancellation of Reservation

An employer can submit the application independently in ten minutes. The harder questions are why a reservation disappeared when no one canceled it, whose reservation to cancel when the limit is exceeded, and whether doing so will put the enterprise’s status at risk. This is where a lawyer’s assistance is needed, both before and after the application.

What we do:

• identify the reason for cancellation if the enterprise did not submit an application;

• check in advance whose reservations should be canceled, when, and in what order, including upon dismissal and when the limit is exceeded;

• prepare the application and assist with submission—the head of the enterprise or its authorized signatory signs it;

• assess whether the situation threatens the enterprise’s status and what needs to be done to retain it;

• prepare a new reservation application if the employee needs to remain reserved.

Our fees depend on your specific needs: analyzing the situation based on register data, the limit, and the enterprise’s status; recalculating the limit after staffing changes; preparing the application and assisting with submission; assessing the risk to critically important enterprise status and planning how to retain it; and, if necessary, arranging a new reservation for the employee.

Dismissing a reserved employee, exceeding the limit, or unsure why a reservation has disappeared? Describe your situation in the inquiry form on our website or call us. We will check the register to find out what happened and prepare the necessary application.

For more information about assistance with reservation of employees liable for military service, see our service page.