Opinion: Ukraine may have no choice but to lower its fighting age – Brian Bonner

Add commentMarch 29, 20244 min read

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.

It’s laudable that the nation’s leaders want to protect their young, but in a war for survival, Ukraine simply needs more soldiers.

Last year, Ukraine’s parliament approved legislation to lower the conscription age to 25, but President Volodymyr Zelensky did not sign it into law. Now, new legislation has been proposed to do the same, but lawmakers have not acted. If passed and signed into law, the pool of potential recruits would be enlarged by perhaps a few hundred thousand men. The legislation may pass out of necessity, but there is no guarantee that it has enough political support.

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.

Despite what French President Emmanuel Macron has recently suggested in his transformation from dove to hawk, foreign governments are not going to send their soldiers to fight Ukraine’s war – especially with so many Ukrainian men from 18 to 26 not in the fight.

Ukraine is being told this nicely, as my recent guest on Hromadske Radio’s “Ukraine Calling” program, Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ben Hodges, did. Few foreigners are more pro-Ukrainian than him, but even he said that Ukraine risks losing support – and aid – over the issue.

“When you see that Ukraine is not willing to do everything necessary to have everybody in the fight that is needed, this does run the risk of undermining some support for Ukraine,” Hodges told me.

Others are not so nice.

After meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv on March 18, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham – a supporter of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is no fan of Ukraine – bluntly told Ukraine to recruit more soldiers to fight. Graham voted against the $60 billion aid package that passed the Senate despite his opposition. Trump, however, is dead set against helping Ukraine, and consequently, the assistance package has been held up for months in the Republican-controlled and Trump-subservient U.S. House.