In April 2024, Ukraine lowered its conscription age (or "mobilisation age for combat duty") from 27 to 25 (Reuters).
On 2024-11-27, "US urges Ukraine to lower fighting age to 18 to bolster ranks against Russia" (Reuters).
Why is Ukraine's conscription age so high despite having fought a war for nearly 3 years?
In many countries (that have conscription), the conscription age is 18 (CIA).
The problem is indeed lack of forces on the front lines. But lowering the so-called age limit of mobilization is not the solution.
The perception of a high age limit is not due to a hard limit. It is most likely due to reservists being mobilized in order of experience.
Mobilization goes in waves: operational reserves, then former military personnel, then those who have had military training. Only then do they call on the general public. Naturally, those with more experience are going to be older.
Recently (July 2024) they have improved their voluntary registration process and have recently signed up 2 million reservists. So anytime you hear about people being “taken” by police for “dodging the draft”, they are reservists who have not registered.
The number of reservists registered is satisfactory (with another 4 million allegedly available before needing to conscript the public in general).
When the war began there were more than enough volunteers even signing up to satisfy the defense force’s needs.
And this is speculative, but based on anecdotal accounts, there is a general desire to avoid mobilizing younger men because many have not had a chance to start families yet. Additionally I speculate that the older generation would rather the younger generations not be exposed to the horrors of war if not necessary.
I want to also address the more recent decrease in volunteers and the reluctance of some reservists to register. This reluctance is of course real and common in any war that lasts more than a year.
The reluctance has been exacerbated by the lack of a strong demobilization strategy. When the invasion began in 2022, the government was not ready to fight an extended full scale existential war for three plus years and the time limits in mobilization were not made clear.
And recently the new mobilization law has still failed to require a number of longer term contracts for professional soldiers (i.e. those who are less worried about a separate career or starting a family). And it also failed to specify a time limit for mobilization of non operational reserves or volunteers.
In other words, volunteering and registration have decreased because it is unclear how long the war will go on. And for many of those, it means putting a family or career on hold indefinitely. But again they have enough soldiers, which brings the most important point.
The reason that there is a manpower shortage on the front lines is that they simply cannot arm everyone. They lack the weapons, vehicles and ammunition to fully equip the men they have:
There are still more than 30 territorial defence brigades in the Armed Forces, armed only with small arms and mortars, although they could be transformed into full-fledged mechanised brigades if they were to be provided with armoured vehicles, artillery, electronic warfare equipment and so on. The insufficient amount of weapons and military equipment is also a problem for regular brigades. For example, the 14 reserve brigades created by Ukraine cannot be used in combat zones due to the delay in the delivery of equipment that was promised by partners.
Requiring Ukraine to lower the age limit of conscription in order to continue receiving aid is a somewhat misleading demand. It appears to be more of a political posturing than a reasonable demand; regardless of motivations for making it, the result is the spreading of the false impression that Ukraine is running out of men.
Via RUSI
FWTW:
Dmytro Lytvyn, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s communications adviser, responded to recent calls for Kyiv to lower the conscription age from 25 to 18 by saying that there are not enough weapons to begin with.
“It doesn’t make sense to see calls for Ukraine to lower the mobilization age, presumably in order to draft more people, when we can see that previously announced equipment is not arriving on time. Because of these delays, Ukraine lacks weapons to equip already mobilized soldiers,” Lytvyn said on social media.
As for the age threshold, the 27 y.o. threshold (only lowered to 25 this spring) was inherited from the previous administration. Back then, in 2015, the plan was for
Ukrainians between the ages of 20 and 27 would be called up for 18 months of military service. President Petro Poroshenko earlier stressed that these recruits would not have to serve on the frontline.
I.e. a system not too dissimilar from Russia's, where first-time conscripts aren't sent to the front line outside Russia, in theory at least. I suppose with the advent of the full-scale invasion, conscripting people at 20 just for training became impractical. My hunch is confirmed in another piece (written alas in somewhat bad English), written in January:
From 18 to 27 years of age under the current legislation, a person can be forcibly called up only for compulsory military service, which was canceled because of the war.
Men aged 18 to 60 who are not eligible for a deferment and are recognized as fit for service are subject to mobilization in Ukraine. But there are certain nuances in the 18-25 age range. There is no general mobilization of young people under the age of 25.
So, 18-25 y.o. can be conscripted, just not mobilized, i.e. sent to the front. (Unless they volunteer for the latter.)
The 'demographic pyramid' motivation for that (25/27 threshold for being sent to the front) is/was something like
Whereas other countries fighting existential wars have usually fallen back on recruiting vast numbers of young men as soon as they reach 18 years of age, Ukraine was already facing a demographic crisis before the war began, and remains desperate to shield its younger adults.
Russia faces not so dissimilar demographic problems - this war is the first in history between ageing states with declining populations.
But of the two, Ukraine’s demographics put it at a disadvantage. While Russia’s population was already predicted to shrink by 25 percent over the next two generations, Ukraine’s was set to fall by almost half.
Long-term studies of Ukraine’s population suggest its birth rate began to fall as long ago as the 1960s - well before much of the rest of what was then the Soviet Union. But it plunged particularly fast after independence in the 1990s and the start of the new millennium, leaving a particular shortage of young people now in their late teens or early twenties.
From another piece:
There are more than twice as many Ukrainian men in their 40s as in their 20s.
N.B. Russia has executed some long range strikes on Ukrainian training facilities. So merely conscripting people for training is not exactly risk-free for the conscripted, during a war like this. Also, the payoff for them to be mobilized only years later after their training is rather uncertain, when the same resources could be used to train people who can be sent to the front right now.
You can find an explanation for this if you look up articles from the time Ukraine lowered its conscription age.
Conscription has been a sensitive matter amid Ukraine’s growing shortages of infantry and ammunition, which have helped give Russia the battlefield initiative...
The average soldier’s age on both sides is over 40, military analysts say. Some Ukrainians worry that lowering the minimum conscription age to 25 and taking more young adults out of the workforce could backfire by further harming the war-ravaged economy, which is why the draft age wasn’t simply set at 18.
...
Zelenskyy took almost a year to sign the law lowering the conscription age, perhaps reflecting how unpopular such a move might be.
Also: currently many Ukrainian men simply don't want to fight, with the result that they are actively dodging the draft, which means such a move would be highly unpopular. It's not just the men - some women also would rather their men not fight. You can see some quotes about this in the AP article above, and also read e.g. this source about how Ukraine has to force men to enlist.
You are confusing conscription and mobilization. These are different things.
The purpose of conscription is basic military training, after which young men are counted as an army reserve. Training is simpler while they are young.
Mobilization is a direct delivery of cannon fodder to the battlefront.
Killing of young people is a bad idea in the long term. That's why Hitlerjugend was mobilized only as a last resort, six years after the war started, when defeat was almost unavoidable.
You've received a lot of perfectly reasonable answers, and I am not sure which decision period you are referring to, but recently another reason might have been related with a possibility of freezing the conflict. In such case Ukraine may not need as many soldiers for their army, and also there likely soon be elections for the president there. This way the current administration can increase their chances of re-election by not lowering mobilization age - a move which would be very unpopular.
