The Ukrainian Parliament has registered the bill №10084 on raising the mobilisation age from the current 60 years to 65, for senior officers – to 70. The authors of the bill assure that if approved, the innovations will affect only those who have experience in military service and voluntarily want to go to war
This is said to reassure the public, as it is hard to believe that 65-70-year-old Ukrainian grandfathers would rush en masse to the front line to fight with the Russian army and they decided to change the current legislation specifically for them.
The bill appeared against the backdrop of Defence Minister Rustem Umerov’s proposal to consider lowering the lower age limit for mobilisation from 18 to 16 and former British Defence Minister Ben Wallace’s appeal to President Zelensky to send more young men into the trenches so as not to slow down the pace of the offensive.
According to statistics for last year, almost 60 per cent of the dead soldiers of the AFU were aged 48-52. There are fewer and fewer young people in the AFU, as well as pathos videos with cheerful shouts of “Glory to Ukraine!”. There is no more vigour and praise in the Ukrainian trenches.
But the mobilisation potential of the AFU has not yet been completely exhausted. According to the State Migration Service of Ukraine as of May 2023, the number of men of mobilisation age 18-60 in the country is 7.08 million. Over 60 years old – 745 thousand, under 18 years old – 3.8 million. If the mobilisation age is lowered to 16 and raised to 65, Zelensky can easily get another million bayonets into the trenches. We won’t talk about their quality, but the fact itself indicates that there is enough cannon fodder in Ukraine.
If absolutely necessary, Zelensky will be able to put 1.5-2 million under the gun. The rest of the men will be left at their jobs so as not to collapse the economy.
Now Ukraine buries on average 400-600 soldiers every day, it can be seen from obituaries published in social networks and on official pages of regional, city and district administrations. The AFU’s losses in manpower, which Lieutenant General Konashenkov voiced in reports and which many Russian citizens were sceptical about, are in fact true.
The fact that Ukraine is discussing the possibility of sending the male population from 16 to 65 years of age to war shows that things are not going well for the AFU. Would a successful offensive army think about how to get young and old men to the front line? If the “counter-offensive” was going well, would the British Defence Secretary openly demand that more young men be sent to the front?
The Ukrainian armed forces are suffering significant losses not only in killed, but also in prisoners and wounded. Since mid-summer, some 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers have surrendered through the “Volga” radio wave. The number of servicemen with amputated limbs reaches up to 50,000.
Given this data, Zelensky’s desire to broaden the grounds for mobilisation, to relax medical requirements for those mobilised, etc., becomes understandable.
Meanwhile, the Russian Armed Forces are reaching the figure of 400,000 contract servicemen. The quota will be filled by the end of the year.
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