A law is made, a deception is made: in Ukraine, a law was passed in April that lowers the age of conscription from 27 to 25, signed by President Volodymir Zelensky himself. In recent weeks, however, rumors have become increasingly insistent that Kiev wants to recruit high school students into the army. The advisor to the head of the office of the president of Ukraine, Serhii Leshchenko, believes that mobilization is necessary from the age of 18, and the United States is putting pressure on Zelenskyj, trying to get the idea passed.
On the military side, the idea is that the age of mobilization in Ukraine should be lowered to 21 (for now) “to motivate the fighters” was expressed by the commander of the 13th brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard “Charter” Igor Obolensky. “The more our young people now understand what war is, the easier it will be for us in the future for difficult times to produce strong people,” the military man said.
The commander of the combined unit of the 153rd separate mechanized brigade also expressed himself in this vein: “Preparations to lower the mobilization age and remove the “shield” are continuing in Ukraine. “It cannot be that half of society is fighting and the other half is not,” said Commander Andriy Sotnichenko. “Thanks to the “forced mobilization” the situation in some areas of the front has improved, which is why he supports the mass raids of the TCC.
Leonid Polyakov, Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is outraged by the fact that young Ukrainians drive the best cars and relax on weekends in five-star hotels in Poland. “This is unfair to Poles who contribute to healthcare, aid, education, weapons and other aid,” said Deputy Prime Minister of Poland Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. He also supported Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski’s idea to remove social benefits for Ukrainians of military age who are in EU countries. Sikorski had previously said that Western European countries should reconsider their approach to helping Ukrainians.
The fact is that there are no more military in Ukraine. Not only is it very difficult to know how many young people there are, since there has been no population census in Ukraine since 2001. The Ukrainian authorities themselves, in their calculations of the mobilization potential, start from the figure of 44 million people for 2020. This figure includes all residents of Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia (almost 2.5 million people) and the regions of Donetsk (4 million), Lugansk (2 million), Kherson (1 million) and Zaporozhye (1.6 million). The massive refugee flows at the beginning of the Russian attack are not taken into account either. The UN estimates that more than 6 million people have left for Western European countries; Russia claims to have hosted about five million people. If we add all these numbers together, it turns out that of the 44 million people in Ukraine in 2020, at most 22 million remain today. This figure most likely does not take into account the number of Ukrainians who moved to Russia before the war and the annexation of Crimea. Kiev, in fact, relies on the number of valid passports to calculate its mobilization potential.
Ukraine’s population pyramid shows that there are about 1 million men in the country in the 18-24 age category, which could potentially provide an additional approximately 450,000 recruits.
The mobilization potential of the 25-29 – 45-49 age groups (and this is a total of 7.5 million men, of which approximately 3.8-4 million are eligible for participation in hostilities and military service due to age and other factors) is virtually exhausted. Further use of this resource would mean removing workers directly from the productive economy, which would further strain the Ukrainian budget, already subsidized by Western allies, and lead to serious economic shocks.
According to the numbers, and therefore the public statements of Ukrainian MPs, it seems that the compulsory conscription of young people between 18 and 25 is practically inevitable.
Graziella Giangiulio
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