45-Day Reservation in Ukraine: Temporary Reservation of Employees with Military Registration Violations

A 45-day reservation, or temporary employee reservation from mobilization, can solve a problem with a new hire who cannot be reserved under the standard procedure: the employee may lack a military registration document, may not have updated personal data, or may be wanted by a Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center (TCC). This temporary reservation mechanism for employees with military registration violations is not available to every critically important enterprise. It is limited to the defense sector: companies in the defense-industrial complex and enterprises recognized as critically important specifically for supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The deferment is limited to 45 calendar days, counted from the date of the employment agreement. The same employee cannot receive another temporary reservation until the next calendar year. The application is submitted through Diia, and the result is issued within 24 hours. The employee must correct the military registration violation before the period expires; after that, the employee can be reserved under the standard procedure.

Below we explain who may use this mechanism, how to calculate the 45-day period, how to file the application, and what happens if the employee does not resolve the issue in time. The final section explains the standard reservation procedure for a newly hired employee.

The 45-Day Reservation Law: What It Is and When It Took Effect

Under the standard reservation procedure, the key requirements apply first to the employee: the person must be registered for military service, must have updated personal data, and must not be wanted by the TCC. If even one of these conditions is missing, the system will not place the person on special military registration. This created a dead end for defense manufacturers that needed to hire a specialist with unresolved military-registration issues and reserve that person immediately.

Temporary reservation solves this problem, although only for a limited period. The legal basis was introduced by Law of Ukraine No. 4630-IX dated October 9, 2025, “On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine Regarding the Organization of Employment Relations Under Martial Law.” It was adopted on the basis of Draft Law No. 13335, which is the document commonly referred to as the draft law on 45-day reservation. The law took effect on December 4, 2025 and introduced three changes:

• Article 25 of the Law “On Mobilization Preparation and Mobilization” introduced the possibility of reserving employees with military registration violations for a maximum of 45 calendar days;
• the Law “On the Organization of Employment Relations Under Martial Law” gave such enterprises the right to hire these employees and set a maximum probation period of 45 calendar days;
• the same law gave the employer the right to dismiss an employee who does not put the required military-registration documents in order within the allotted period.

The application procedure is governed by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 76 dated January 27, 2023; the 45-day rules were added by Resolution No. 1608 dated December 8, 2025. The Diia service became available on March 13, 2026.

A 45-day reservation and “Resolution No. 45” are different things. Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 45 dated February 4, 2015 concerns an older mechanism under which employees were reserved according to lists of positions and professions; it has no connection with the 45-day period.

Which Enterprises Can Reserve Employees for 45 Days?

This is where confusion arises most often: many publications suggest that the 45-day mechanism is available to every critically important enterprise. In fact, the group of eligible employers is much narrower.

The law is stricter than it may appear: critically important status must be combined with activity in the defense-industrial sector. Whether the enterprise, institution, or organization was recognized as critical for the Armed Forces and other military formations, for the economy, or for public life-support during the special period is not the only issue. Diia describes the service more narrowly: it is intended for defense-industrial enterprises and enterprises included in the Unified List as critically important for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

What this means for an employer:

• critically important status for the economy obtained from another ministry (not the Ministry of Defense) or from a regional military administration, without belonging to the defense-industrial sector, allows only standard employee reservation; temporary reservation is not available;
• the company’s status is checked as of the application date: if the critically important decision or defense contract has expired, access to the service will not be available;
• recognition as critically important for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or classification as part of the defense-industrial complex is, as Diia explains, handled by an authorized body of the Ministry of Defense.

There is, however, one advantage over the standard procedure: the law allows these employees to be reserved “regardless of the number of employees already reserved.” An exhausted quota is therefore not an obstacle: 45-day temporary reservation does not depend on the company’s reservation limit.

We explain separately which companies may reserve employees and which criteria are used to grant critically important status.

Who Can and Cannot Be Reserved for 45 Days?

The law identifies four situations in which an employee liable for military service may be reserved temporarily:

• the employee has no military registration document at all or it was issued improperly;
• the person is not registered for military service;
• the person has not updated personal data as required by Law No. 3633-IX dated April 11, 2024;
• the person is wanted by the TCC for violating military registration rules or requirements of legislation on defense or mobilization preparation and mobilization.

These circumstances may overlap because the law connects them with the words “and/or.” This means a person who is wanted may be temporarily reserved in the same way as a person who lacks a military registration document.

Difference Between the Law and Diia

The law expressly allows temporary reservation even for a person who is not registered for military service at all. However, the Diia service instructions and the Ministry of Defense explanation dated March 17, 2026 take the opposite practical position: until the person is entered in the military register, the system will not reserve them. Therefore, an employee who is not found in the Oberih register must first be registered and only then can the application be submitted. When planning such a hire, do not assume the application will pass simply because the wording of the law allows it.

Who Cannot Be Reserved Under This Mechanism?

Temporary reservation will not work if:

• the employment agreement with the employee was concluded more than 45 days ago;
• the person has already received a temporary reservation in the current calendar year;
• the person already has an active reservation or another valid deferment;
• the law does not allow the person to be called up during mobilization at all — such persons are not reserved in the first place.

Important! The employee should also remember that temporary reservation does not cancel liability in any way. The law specifically provides that a person remains liable for military-registration violations as before. If there are grounds for a fine, the fine must be paid. We explain the amounts and grounds in our separate article on fines for military registration violations.

From Which Date Are the 45 Days Counted, and Can the Mechanism Be Used Twice?

This is where a mistake can be most costly.

The 45-day period is counted from the date of the employment agreement, not from the application date. The law and the reservation procedure are consistent on this point: 45 calendar days are counted from the date the employment agreement is concluded. Diia adds a technical restriction: no more than 45 days may pass between the employment start date and the application date, and the employment start date cannot be later than the application date.

In substance, this is the same rule described from two sides. The application can be submitted at any time within those 45 days, but the deferment will still expire on the 45th day after the employment agreement. This is why a so-called 45-day reservation often lasts less than 45 days in practice.

Example from our practice: the company signed the employment agreement on the first day of the month but submitted the application only on the twentieth. The employee could still be reserved, but only about 25 days remained to correct the violations, not 45. If HR had remembered the application on day 50, temporary reservation would already have been unavailable for that employee.

Practical conclusion: prepare the application before the employee is hired and submit it on the day the registers show the employee as formally employed.

A second temporary reservation in the same calendar year is not available. The law limits the mechanism to one temporary reservation per employee per calendar year, and the system checks this during filing. The initial 45-day period cannot be extended by another 45 days: after it expires, the employee must either move to standard reservation or remain without a deferment.

Another new rule is that the probation period at these enterprises cannot exceed 45 calendar days, regardless of the employee or the state of that person’s military registration.

How to Reserve an Employee for 45 Days Through Diia

The application may be submitted by the head of the enterprise, a person with signing authority, or an authorized representative. According to the Diia instructions, the steps are:

1. Log in to the Diia portal using the qualified electronic signature of the legal entity.
2. Open the “Employee Reservation” service.
3. Confirm the company information and your role in the company.
4. In the “Employee Information” section, select the category “Employees With Military Registration Violations.”
5. Enter the employee’s information and the date on which the employment relationship began.
6. Review and sign the application. If it is submitted by an authorized representative, it must also be signed by the head of the company or the person recorded as an authorized signatory in the Unified State Register.

What Information Is Required?

The amount of information is limited, but the system compares every item against state registers, and even a one-letter discrepancy can stop the application:

• company information — full legal name, EDRPOU code, and the head of the company; Diia retrieves this information automatically from the Unified State Register;
• employee information — full name, Ukrainian taxpayer identification number, and the deferment period;
• employment start date — the same date that the company reported to the Pension Fund;
• confirmation that the salary requirement is met. For critically important enterprises, the Procedure requires a salary of at least three times the minimum wage (2.5 times the minimum wage for enterprises in active combat territories); state and municipal enterprises and several other categories are exempt from this requirement.

No copy of the employment order or military ID needs to be uploaded. The Procedure does not require paper documents for filing; the information is obtained from state registers.

How Long Does the Review Take?

Temporary reservation has its own processing period under the Procedure: the employee is automatically transferred to special military registration within 24 hours after the list is created. Under the standard reservation procedure, the period is three times longer — 72 hours. The application status can be tracked in the personal account, the result is sent by message, and the employee will see the deferment in Reserve+.

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What Must Be Done During the 45 Days and What Happens Afterward?

Temporary reservation gives the employee time, not a final solution. Whether the company can keep the employee protected from mobilization depends on how those days are used.

What the Employee Must Do

The employee must remove the specific obstacle that made standard reservation impossible: register for military service, update personal data, obtain or correct the military registration document, or have the wanted status removed. The employee must do this personally through the TCC or Reserve+; the employer cannot do it on the employee’s behalf. The process should begin on the first day: queues and TCC processing times are outside the employer’s control, while the 45-day deferment cannot be extended.

If the Violation Is Corrected

The law then allows standard reservation under the general rules. Since May 13, 2026, Diia allows the employer to avoid cancelling the temporary reservation and filing from scratch: while the temporary period is still valid, the employer submits an application to extend the employee reservation. In the “Employee Category” section, the employer selects “Employees With Military Registration Violations” and also selects the employee’s current category. A decision is issued within one day. For this transition through the “Extension of Employee Reservation” service, an unused place in the company’s reservation quota is not required. However, from that point onward the person is treated as reserved under the standard procedure and, where a quota applies, is counted within that quota.

If the Violation Is Not Corrected

On the 45th day, the deferment expires and is cancelled. The person may again be called up, and the military-registration violations remain unresolved. The 45-day reservation is therefore a one-time mechanism: it cannot be extended or obtained again for the same employee during the same calendar year.

 Must the employer terminate the employment agreement with such an employee? No. Under the Law “On the Organization of Employment Relations Under Martial Law,” employer-initiated dismissal in this situation is permitted, which means it is an option, not an obligation. The enterprise decides whether to terminate the agreement or keep the employee on staff without a reservation. There is one more point to consider: under the wording of the law, hiring a person with military registration violations during the probation period is not treated as a violation by the company’s officials. Once the probation period ends, that protection no longer applies, and the employee with unresolved military-registration issues remains employed under the general rules.

Risks for the Enterprise

These risks are better considered in advance:

• training a new employee may prove wasted if the employee loses the deferment after a month and a half;
• there will be no second attempt for that employee before the end of the calendar year;
• if the enterprise loses its critically important status during those weeks, this deferment and all other employee reservations are cancelled.

Why Temporary Reservation Applications Are Refused and How to Avoid It

Diia can return three results. “Reserved” means the application succeeded. “Not reserved” is returned together with the reason. A third result is “not eligible for reservation.” Below are the reasons that follow directly from the service conditions and what to do in each case.

Most days are lost not because of a refusal, but before the application is even filed. That happened in one of our matters. On Monday, a defense enterprise signed an employment agreement with a machine-tool setup specialist. HR sent the hiring notice to the Pension Fund only on Friday; the register did not “see” the employee until the following Wednesday, and only then could the Diia application be created. No one violated the rules, and the reservation was approved within one day, but nine of the 45 days had already passed. The employee had 36 days, not 45, to complete registration, update data, and obtain the document. Because the period runs from the employment agreement rather than the application, the Pension Fund notification should be submitted on the hiring date.

Does the 45-Day Reservation Mechanism Work in Practice?

There is no need to rely on reviews of the 45-day reservation mechanism. The service conditions themselves show where it works and where it does not.

The fact that the mechanism is active is clear: the Diia service has operated since March 13, 2026, and in May a fast transition to standard reservation was added. The state is not discontinuing the mechanism; it is refining it.

However, “it works” does not mean “it will help everyone.” Before making promises to a candidate, remember three restrictions built into the service:

• only the defense sector may use it;
• the application will not pass if the employee is not in the military register;
• 45 days is a short period for an issue that must often be resolved by the TCC rather than by the employee alone.

The difference in outcomes is illustrated by another case from our practice. An enterprise hired two specialists at the same time. The first had only outdated personal data: if he updated them during the first week, the enterprise could submit the extension in the third week and move him to standard reservation. The second employee was wanted by the TCC and had to appear there personally; from that point onward the timing was outside his control. If the issue was still unresolved by day 40, the deferment would expire on day 45 and there would be no second attempt that year. Both employees received the same temporary reservation, but the consequences were different. The conclusion is simple: before signing the employment agreement, identify the exact violation affecting the candidate and assess whether it can realistically be corrected within a month and a half.

Reservation of Newly Hired Employees: When Can the Application Be Filed?

Now consider the standard situation: an enterprise entitled to reserve employees hires a person whose military registration is fully in order. Newly hired employees are reserved under the general rules, which we explain in detail in our guide on how to reserve employees. Here we focus only on the points that apply specifically to a new hire.

There is no minimum employment period. The reservation procedure does not require an employee to work for any particular period before the application is submitted. It only requires the person to be in an employment relationship with the enterprise. Therefore, the application may be submitted immediately after hiring.

However, the application can be submitted only after the system “sees” the employee. The Diia reservation list is generated from data in the register of persons liable for military service, while employment information is transmitted there from the Pension Fund. Until the hiring notice reaches the register, the person will not appear among those who can be reserved. Diia recommends submitting the notice of changes in employment through the Pension Fund portal and then waiting up to two days.

What the system checks. Under the standard reservation procedure, the employee must meet four conditions:

• the employee is registered for military service;
• the employee is in an employment relationship with the enterprise;
• the employee’s personal data have been updated;
• the employee is not wanted by the TCC.

The system also checks the company’s reservation quota. A new hire simultaneously increases the total number of persons liable for military service used to calculate the quota and also occupies a place within that quota. We explain separately how employee reservation quotas are calculated.

Salary. The Procedure links the salary requirement to the deferment period: the salary must be accrued “during the period for which the deferment is granted.” Therefore, a new employee does not need to have received the required salary in previous months or quarters. However, if the salary falls below the threshold during the reservation period, that is a ground for cancellation of the deferment. Previous-month salary is not checked when the application is filed; the company head merely confirms in the application that the salary requirement will be met. This salary requirement also applies to the 45-day temporary reservation because the Procedure does not provide a separate exception.

Processing time. Critically important enterprises receive the result no later than 72 hours after the list is created. We explain the timing in more detail in our guide on employee reservation.

If the New Employee Has Military Registration Problems

You may discover the problem not during the job interview, but during filing: Diia will return the status “not reserved” and state the reason. Usually the reason is one of three unmet conditions: the person is not registered for military service, the data have not been updated, or the person is wanted by the TCC.

The next steps depend on your company’s status.

A defense enterprise should build the following sequence into its HR procedure alongside the other military-registration rules for hiring:

1. Before hiring, ask the candidate to show what appears in Reserve+: whether there is a registration record, whether the personal data have been updated, and whether there is a wanted-status marker.
2. If you identify a violation, plan the temporary reservation before signing the employment agreement: the 45 days begin running on the date the agreement is concluded.
3. On the hiring date, send the employment notice to the Pension Fund and submit the Diia application as soon as the employee appears in the reservation list.
4. Agree specific dates with the employee: when the person will go to the TCC and when the personal data will be updated.

Compared with the standard procedure, temporary reservation for a new hire is short, available only once per year, does not depend on the quota, and does not require the employee’s military registration to already meet the standard-reservation conditions. The portal, electronic signature, and registers are the same.

How We Help With Temporary Employee Reservation

An enterprise needs an employee who can actually work, not merely an accepted application. We therefore support both the filing itself and what happens afterward.

Our work includes:

• checking whether the enterprise is eligible to use temporary reservation and whether its entry in the Unified List is current;
• assessing before hiring whether the application for the employee is likely to pass and what should be corrected in advance;
• preparing and supporting the Diia filing so that none of the 45 days is lost unnecessarily;
• preparing a list of steps for the employee and monitoring the deadlines;
• once the violation has been corrected, preparing the application to transfer the employee to standard reservation before the 45 days expire and supporting its review.

What We Need From You and How the Cost Is Determined

To begin the reservation process, the enterprise should prepare:

• a status document — a decision recognizing the enterprise as critically important for the needs of the Armed Forces, confirmation that it belongs to the defense-industrial complex, or a valid defense supply contract, including the relevant validity dates;
• participation of an authorized company representative who can access the Diia account using the legal entity’s electronic signature, or the head’s agreement to sign the application using their own electronic signature;
• the list of employees to be reserved, with the dates of their employment agreements;
• military registration information for each employee — the information visible to the person in Reserve+;
• confirmation that the hiring notice was submitted to the Pension Fund;
• the employees’ salaries.

There is no government fee for the Diia service itself. The price of our legal support depends on the scope of work:

• how many employees are being reserved and whether their situations are the same;
• whether the company’s status and Unified List entry must be checked before filing;
• whether there are discrepancies in state registers that must be corrected before filing;
• whether further support is required to move the employee to standard reservation before the 45-day period expires;
• urgency — how many of the 45 days have already passed.

Planning to hire someone with unresolved military-registration issues and worried that you will not complete the 45-day reservation in time? Submit a request through our website or call the listed phone number.

Read more about what is included in our legal support for employee reservation on the service page.