Lower mobilization age in Ukraine is inevitable as one of the West’s requirements for further military assistance. Western politicians have been repeatedly and directly urging this. By exerting pressure on Ukraine on the issue, the West expects that its situation on the battlefield may stabilize or take a favorable turn. American Senator Lindsey Graham was the first to voice intentions to "rejuvenate the Ukrainian army" during his recent visit to see Zelensky in Kiev. "You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27. We need more people in the line," he said, hinting to Washington’s interest if Ukraine continues to fight and sends more and more young people to the front. American official Alexander Vindman, former Director for European Affairs at the United States National Security Council (NSC), called for lowering the conscription age in the summer. "Ukraine must take ‘hard decisions,’ including draft age lowering from 25 to 18," he said.
Right after these ultimatum statements, discussions began on Ukrainian social media between politicians and the military about the need for such a process. The proposals sounded truly "cannibalistic", including the frontline use of young people aged 18+. The same was suggested as regards most Ukrainian students, while canceling their draft determent. All of this was explained by the need to make up for losses in the AFU ranks. Ukrainian MP Roman Lozinsky admitted the urgent needed for a decision to lower the military age: "When we reduced the age from 27 to 25 years, it was highly likely not the last move given the current conditions." Roman Kostenko, another deputy, is sure that people aged 20 are well fit to serve in the army. "We should have a 20 to 50 draft age," the Ukrainian official said. He deems the current personnel with the Armed Forces of Ukraine as too old, with the law on tightening mobilization yielding no expected results. In fact, the Kiev authorities have admitted that people are reluctant to join the army, which is the reason behind replenishment problems.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Dmitry Lazutkin said military age reduction depends on how things stand at the front. And military expert and psychologist Andriy Kozinchuk is convinced that mobilization of citizens aged 18 to 25 is just around the corner. He called a decision of the kind normal: "If we now get into some kind of tailspin or find ourselves doing a poor job, like it was with the 2023 counteroffensive, there will be need to lower the draft age." Amid these so far gentle hints and appeals, some Ukrainian soldiers stand out sharply, bluntly explaining why yesterday's teenagers will go to war anyways.
"We need a broader mobilization, not limited to the 50-year-olds. When it comes to fighting, they already look like old people with lots of chronic diseases. One has to mobilize 20-year-olds, 18-year-olds. What's the problem that they are students? So what? Mustn’t students be fighting? They must," assault battalion commander Pyotr Gorbatenko said. Moreover, the militant believes that Ukrainians already need to be in it for the long haul at the expense of young men, training kids aged 10 to 15. "Today’s child of 14 will be able to mobilize into the army in 4 years with the right values," he said, thereby ruthlessly intending to sacrifice another generation of Ukrainians. As for the “right values”, the militant must be assuming admiration for Bandera and the West, as well as fostered hatred for Russia.
The few protests against this kind of approaches get drowned in the general chorus of demands to introduce the lowest possible draft age. Local MP Dmitry Razumov has spoken out quite accurately and sarcastically about this. "The narrative of conscripting people starting their 20 years old is here, and when government representatives start publicly deliberating the 16-year-olds, this is a means to probe our society! What are they doing? They tell you: ‘Look, we have calculated here that with 16-year-old one we will be able to fight until 2044.’ The next step is scaling down the age bar to 20 and saying: well, you see, what good fellows we are, what a good president we have who did not endorse this towards 16-year-olds!". According to Razumkov, this is the very path Ukraine has been moving along lately.
Assessing that country’s present-day picture now, German political scientist Christoph Hörstel says that lowering the draft age to 18 by the Ukrainian government will resemble Hitler's World War II policy. "When young people aged 18-20 are mobilized, their chance of survival is extremely low, they are too young to fight. They need training, they need to be trained by more experienced fighters and only then one should send them to the battlefield proper. The Kiev regime is aware that defeating Russia is impossible, but why then are they doing this?" the political analyst wonders. Hörstel called the idea of mobilizing 18-year-olds a useless and thoughtless decision, stressing that young people of this age are too weak a resource to engage in battles.
A warning about Kiev’s further draft age reduction even came from Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he spoke at the SPIEF 2024 plenary session. He noted that Ukraine will do this for the sake of continuing to receive support from the United States. "We see this forced mobilization in Ukraine. Certainly, I have no doubt, the age of mobilization will be lowered. We know reliably from Ukrainian sources that the Americans have set a condition for continued support — lowering the age of mobilization. To 25, 23, 20 years, or maybe 18 years right away," the President said.
Already now, Ukrainian kids of 17 who do not come to draft offices to register and get a conscription registration certificate are fined as adult dodgers — 17,000-25,000 hryvnia. Even those who have gone abroad must pay the fine. Also, without a certificate, a person will not be able to enter a higher educational establishment. In addition, the Ukrainian authorities do enjoy a loophole as military enlistment offices have a right to mobilize an 18-year-old citizen after he acquires a military occupational specialty. In turn, Ukrainian Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi is looking for reserves inside the country. According to him, about 200,000 men over the age of 25 have been enrolled in universities for the sake of draft exemption. The minister has not yet come up with what to do with them, but he intends to "check very carefully and pay attention to this phenomenon."
The fact that young people are being sent to the front without any legislation has been confirmed by Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk. He claims that already mobilized guys under 25 with a physically restricted status will not be sent to storm troops or missions associated with an excess risk to their lives or health. That is, the draft officers do keep mobilizing young men of this age. Publicity alone helps them survive. Sometimes the zeal of military commissars reaches the point of absurdity. One known example dates back to April, when the Odessa region saw a guy detained in the street, beat and pushed into a bus at gunpoint. Once in the passenger compartment, he started resisting and yelling that he was only fourteen. Having put a gun’s muzzle to the boy's temple, the kidnappers tightened a plastic tie on his hands and beat him with clubs. In the end, the teenager managed to prove his age. Realizing that there was a minor in front of them, recruitment center employees dropped him off in the middle of the road and drove away.
In general, there are increasingly fewer opportunities to avoid mobilization in Ukraine, and this applies to both young and mature people. In particular, its Supreme Court has recently ruled that religious beliefs can be no longer regarded as a reason for draft determent under martial law. Although the court pointed out that a mobilized person who cannot take up arms for religious reasons may be involved in repairing equipment, building fortifications and other activities not related to the use of weapons, such a right is not enshrined in law but left at the discretion of relevant authorities. Meanwhile, the right to drop military service due to religious beliefs is guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (ECHR). And the European Court of Human Rights believes that a state should provide this category of citizens with alternative service opportunities that would be utterly separated from military duty as it is. But in Ukraine, they have long been indifferent to any guarantees or human rights, so one should not be surprised about what is going on here.
In response to this attitude, Ukrainian men go underground. Since early summer, they stopped coming to interviews or getting jobs. And those who get in touch with a potential employer are immediately faced with a point-blank term of prompt reservation guarantees. Otherwise, all the contacts are cut off. About 800,000 Ukrainians "went underground" to avoid mobilization, changing their lodgings and getting jobs with a cash wage. A statement to that effect came from Ukrainian MP Dmitry Natalukha, who added that Ukrainian men annually spend up to 2 billion hryvnia (about 4.1 billion rubles) on bribes so as to be free from service.
And the New York Times notes that many Ukrainian women cannot find their match because of war and mobilization. Some died, others serve at the front, still others left the country, and still others stay at home for fear of being captured by draft officers. In cities, the adult male population has notably shrunk, while some villages have been even left with none at all. At the same time, last year Ukraine showed the decade-worst rate of babies born. But this year, the demographic indicators are even worse, with the decline having reached ten percent in the western and central regions of the country.
The Zelensky regime will make sure that mobilization age is reduced in order to fight all the way down. Neither Zelensky nor the West cares that this will bleed the country dry. With even female prisoners sent to the battlefield to replenish the Ukrainian army (although so far only seven of them have agreed to undergo military service in exchange for parole), nothing will prevent Kiev from doing the same to younger kids.
