The debate in Ukraine after the U.S. proposal to lower the military recruitment age and the country’s demographic challenges
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Kyiv – There is no sign of a peace prospect along the frontlines in eastern Ukraine. Russia continues its offensive, capturing Ukrainian villages one after another. On January 11, according to the Ukrainian Osint project DeepState, Russian forces occupied the Ukrainian town of Kurakhove in the Donetsk region and advanced further toward Pokrovsk, a city near the border with the Dnipropetrovsk region.
On January 12, Mike Waltz, the future National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, gave an interview to ABC News outlining his views on how Ukraine could stabilize the battlefield situation. According to Waltz, meaningful peace talks can only begin once the military situation improves. He suggested that Kyiv lower its conscription age from 25 to 18, thereby recruiting hundreds of thousands of young soldiers into its ranks.
“If Ukrainians are asking the world to fully commit to democracy, then they must fully commit to democracy themselves,” Waltz stated. This is not the first time Americans have proposed conscripting 18-year-olds in Ukraine. The Biden Administration had previously made similar suggestions, and Kyiv understands the American perspective, rooted in their own historical precedent. American 18-year-olds fought in World War II and Vietnam.
However, Vladislav Seleznev, a Ukrainian military expert, argues that age is not the decisive factor in modern warfare. “The key in Russia’s war against Ukraine is the availability of necessary weaponry and technological development,” Seleznev explained. Recruiting an additional 100,000 soldiers would require equipping them with more than 4,000 armored vehicles and at least 1,300 tanks. “It doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 40; you can’t fight Russian tanks barehanded,” he emphasized.
Yaryna Chornoguz, a 29-year-old soldier in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Il Foglio that the frontline situation began to deteriorate when Western allies delayed or failed to deliver critical weapons. She believes that Ukraine still has sufficient human resources to replenish its army ranks under the current legislation, which sets the conscription age at 25. Many men within this age group remain unmobilized.
Chornoguz and other experts warn against lowering the conscription age to 18, as Ukraine’s already diminished population would shrink further. Before the large-scale invasion, the 17–25 age group was already among the smallest in the country due to economic instability in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which led to low birth rates, according to Olga Dukhnich, head of the Demography and Migration Department at the Frontier Institute. This demographic scarcity means fewer young people are available, with most combat volunteers falling in the 35–47 age group, which is more populous.
Mobilizing 18-year-olds would not significantly affect the average age of Ukrainian soldiers, currently around 40, as noted by Mykola Beleskov, a senior analyst at the Come Back Alive foundation. He asserts that Ukraine’s battlefield challenges cannot be resolved by lowering the mobilization age. Instead, they require internal reforms in army management and mobilization processes, alongside an increased focus on firepower such as aviation and artillery. President Volodymyr Zelensky has echoed this sentiment. In early December, he stated on X that the priority should be supplying missiles and weakening Russia’s military potential, not reducing the conscription age.
Ukraine is already likely to face enormous demographic challenges in the future. According to the United Nations, more than six million people have fled the country since the start of the invasion. The potential lowering of the minimum mobilization age could trigger further emigration. “Many mothers with 16- or 17-year-old sons will take them out of the country,” predicts Yaryna Chornoguz.
This would exacerbate Ukraine’s demographic issues, leading to an aging and shrinking population in the coming decades. Currently, Ukraine’s population is around 34 million, including occupied territories. Olga Dukhnich highlights that while sending everyone, including 18-year-olds, to the front might address short-term military needs, it raises a critical long-term question: “When Ukraine wins, who will defend the country in the future?” Dukhnich emphasizes that the number of young people is crucial for Ukraine’s economic and physical survival.