Ukraine may have no choice but to lower its fighting age
In Israel, every citizen can be drafted into the military at the age of 18. In Turkey, the age is 20. When the United States fought its ill-fated war in Vietnam, it sent men into battle at 18 – as many other nations do today. More ominously, Russia lowered its draft age to 18 this year as part of a drive to potentially recruit hundreds of thousands more soldiers to fight its war in Ukraine.
While Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 must register at military enlistment offices and are not permitted to leave the country under martial law, only those over the age of 27 are eligible for conscription. Over two years into Russia’s full-scale war, this leaves Ukraine’s exhausted armed forces with soldiers who are, on average, in their 40s and well past their physical prime for hard combat. This will force a hard decision on Ukraine’s politicians and society with time running short, especially with Russia preparing a spring or summer offensive.
Ukraine’s politicians have been reluctant to lower the fighting age because it would be unpopular. Many defend the relatively high combat age as a social virtue to protect Ukraine’s young adults from the battlefield unless they volunteer.
Ukraine’s parliament passed a law last year lowering the conscription age to 25, lawmaker Oleksii Honcharenko said, but President Volodymyr Zelensky did not sign it into law. If passed, this measure would enlarge the pool of potential recruits by perhaps a few hundred thousand men. The legislation may pass out of necessity, but there’s no guarantee.
Zelensky proceeded to fire the then commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, months after the popular general said Ukraine needed as many as 500,000 more soldiers.
Zelensky kicked the can down the road by ordering the Ukrainian military’s new commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, to audit the country’s conscripts. Presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said that, while Ukraine has as many as 1 million personnel in uniform, less than 300,000 may have seen active combat. What the rest are doing is one of the questions the ongoing audit will answer.
No one wants to go to war. No one wants to be killed. I am an American who came of age in 1978, five years after my nation ended the draft and switched to a professional army of citizens who voluntarily enlisted. If a foreign enemy took over 20% of the U.S., it’s hard to imagine that anyone could escape military service.
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