Updated April 5, 2024 at 11:50 a.m.*
-Analysis-
KYIV — In an effort to strengthen army ranks decimated by more than two years of war with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill this week that lowers the age for military mobilization from 27 to 25.
Bringing down the minimum conscription age by two years is seen as a potential solution to renew the country’s beleaguered military, and address a drop in Ukrainian enlistments. It’s also about a nation’s strikingly old army.
The average age of military personnel in the Ukraine military (40 years old, with plenty of active soldiers even above 45) had already been the subject of a rather overlooked assessment late last year by Serhiy Rakhmanin, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Defense Committee.
This was not the first time either that the issue of the aging Ukrainian army had been raised. Back in the fall of 2023, former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace called on President Volodymyr Zelensky to try to get more young people to join the fight, which provoked a wave of indignation in Ukraine.
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It is worth conceding right away that the current reality in Ukraine is in stark contrast to the world’s military history, where the main burden of war was considered a matter for the young and healthy.
A typical example comes from the homeland of Mr. Wallace, during World War I. In 1916, conscription was introduced in Britain (before that, the country had fought exclusively with volunteer forces), and they began to draft citizens from the age of 18 into the active army. The minimum age for service on the Western Front was 19 years old for a long time, but towards the end of the war, it was lowered to 18 and a half.
The average age of British soldiers killed then was 26 years, with the largest group of deaths among 19-year-olds.
What these figures have in common is that in all cases, we are talking about men under the age of 27: people who today would not be subject to mobilization in Ukraine at all.
“Sacrificing” older men
As for the 40+ age group, which today forms the backbone of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in Britain at that time, that demographic was considered unfit for war. When conscription was introduced in 1916, only men under 41 were subject to it.
We like to draw parallels between the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation and the textbook wars of the 20th century. Yet we are far from sharing the philosophy of which of our own citizens are carrying out the war.
Those who are physically better suited for this should be sent to war
In modern Ukraine, a different approach has prevailed based on the idea of “those who we don’t feel as sorry to sacrifice should be sent to war.” Of course, no one says this out loud, but in practice, our country is guided by this principle. And it has its own inexorable logic.
If a 20-year-old is sent to the front and does not return from the war, then a whole life that he did not have time to live dies with him. The family he could have created in the future dies. His unborn children die. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren will never be born.
At the same time, a Ukrainian man over 40 has lived at least half of his life. As a rule, he manages to start a family and have offspring. And even if he does not return from the war, he will leave a tangible mark. His children will grow up, have children of their own, and the thread of life will not be interrupted.
Protecting the youth
Recently, Ukraine’s mobilization efforts have been aimed at squeezing the maximum out of the category of people who “we don’t feel as sorry to sacrifice.” That includes “miraculous” recovery of chronic patients during military medical examinations, the sudden transformation of those unfit for military service into “limitedly fit” and then simply fit. Also, there are the persistent attempts to take away the deferral of mobilization from the disabled.
And let’s be honest: if it were possible to send 60- and 70-year-olds to the front, Ukraine would mobilize them too.
Of course, the mobilization of people unfit for service also took place during major wars of the past. Military propagandists gladly ridiculed such practices in hostile countries (“Do you have an index finger on your right hand? – I’m left-handed! – Fit!”). However, in the 20th century, this extreme measure was associated with the exhaustion of the most suitable human resources. Roughly speaking, a man under 50 with a bunch of chronic diseases had to join the army only when healthy 20-year-old men “ran out”.
In Ukraine, however, the situation is fundamentally different: an unhealthy man in his 50s has to go to war so that healthy 20-year-olds will not be touched at all.
Soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are clear that this approach is wrong. The same opinion is heard in numerous interviews: the front needs people in their prime. This is a requirement of common sense, and it is hard to argue with it. No one in world history has ever tried to fight, relying on the old and sick, while protecting physically strong young people from war.
Plain demographics
However, there is the other side of the coin that Ukraine cannot ignore either. No one in world history has ever entered a major war with such poor demographics: such a low birth rate, such an elderly population, and such a high rate of depopulation.
In the 30 years preceding World War I, the population of Britain had grown from 35 to 45 million. During the 30 pre-war years, the population of Ukraine, even according to official data, fell from 52 to 41 million.
This is of course simply a fact of recent demographics around the world. In the last third of the 20th century, all developed Western countries faced a falling birth rate and an aging population. And during the same period, great wars with huge losses became the lot of the developing world.
The most recent conflict comparable in scale to the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation was the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. And then the opponents were two eastern despotic states with young populations and disenfranchised women who gave birth to an average of 6.5 children.
Reduction of draft age
Even if we completely dismiss moral issues and limit ourselves to cynical utilitarian calculations, the value of a 20-year-old boy in today’s Ukraine is not comparable to the value of a 20-year-old Englishman during World War I, or a 20-year-old Iranian in the 1980s.
We are forced to face hard choices. On the one hand, it is very difficult to wage a full-scale war, acting contrary to common sense and global military experience. On the other hand, if Ukraine tries to fight according to the classic patterns of the 20th century, it will face consequences that none of the participants in those wars experienced.
There are simply no good choices in this situation. And the government’s decision this week to lower the mobilization age by two years may be too little, too late. Particularly at this difficult moment in the war, that hardly sounds like it will make a difference.
*Originally published Feb. 22, 2024, this article was updated April 5, 2024 with news about Ukraine lowering conscription age, and enriched media.
