Ukrainians condemn US call to lower conscription age amid Russia’s war

Vladislav thinks lowering the conscription age in Ukraine from 25 to 18 is a “bad idea”.

His military service is a sad yet telling example.

The fair-haired, gaunt 20-year-old volunteered to join the Ukrainian army two years ago – and suffered a heavy contusion near the eastern city of Kupiansk.

“It was scary, scary, scary,” Vladislav told Al Jazeera in central Kyiv, as he dragged on a cigarette.

“I’ve seen a lot. I’ve got problems with my head,” he said as if apologising for his reluctance to talk about his combat experience.

Vladislav is awaiting a medical assessment that would either have him demobilised – or dispatched back to the frontline in the southeastern Donbas region, where the outmanned and outgunned Ukrainian forces slowly lose ground to Russian invaders.

While he was able to choose to volunteer legally at 18, he does not believe in compulsory enlistment for 18-year-olds.

A senior White House official urged Kyiv on Thursday to lower conscription age to 18 to replenish the losses of manpower in Donbas, where Russian forces have spurred their advance on several strategic, heavily fortified strongholds.

“The need right now is manpower,” the unnamed official told reporters in Washington. “Mobilisation and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time, as we look at the battlefield today.”

Ukraine’s top brass has not even discussed the issue.

“No meetings to discuss this issue have been held, no suggestions on lowering [the conscription age] have been made,” a source in Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

So far, Kyiv has officially responded with a refusal and a rebuke.

“It doesn’t make sense to see calls for Ukraine to lower the mobilisation age, presumably in order to draft more people, when we can see that previously announced [Western military] equipment is not arriving on time,” Dmitry Litvin, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, posted on X.

“Because of these delays, Ukraine lacks weapons to equip already mobilised soldiers,” he wrote.

‘We’re paying for US indecision’

Some Ukrainians echo Litvin’s opinion.

“How about they give us more arms without any delays?” Oleksiy Surovchenko, a 64-year-old ex-police officer told Al Jazeera, referring to President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration.

“America got us into this mess, and now we’re paying for their indecisiveness and inaction,” he added angrily, referring to Washington’s efforts to destroy the colossal stockpiles of Soviet-era weaponry in Ukraine in the 1990s and early 2000s.

After Barack Obama was elected US senator representing Illinois, his first foreign trip was to Donbas in 2005, where he oversaw the destruction of artillery shells.

Obama helped secure a further $48m from the US Congress to fund the destruction of 400,000 small arms, 1,000 portable anti-aircraft missiles and 15,000 tonnes of ammunition.

The cash-strapped Ukrainian governments largely ignored the needs of their armed forces and transferred many key weapons such as strategic bombers to Russia as payment for natural gas supplies.

Until 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and backed separatists in Donbas, Russia was not seen as a potential aggressor, and its president, Vladimir Putin, enjoyed an average approval rating of 59 percent among Ukrainians.

A decade later – and almost three years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion – some Ukrainians still see Russians as a friendly, brotherly Slavic nation they do not want to fight.

“I would choose to be shot to death right here, in Kyiv instead of going to the frontline,” Serhiy, a 17-year-old high school graduate, told Al Jazeera. “I wouldn’t be able to raise my hand at the people of my blood.”

He cited the customs of Cossacks, a medieval caste of frontier warriors in what is now central Ukraine who formed quasi-democratic communities and combined nomadic cavalry tactics with firearms.

“Our forefathers, Cossacks, didn’t allow a man who had no children, no heirs, to go to war,” Serhiy said. “I would have done the same. If there are no people, who the hell needs this land?”

Ukraine’s population stood at 50 million before the 1991 Soviet collapse, but the birthrate among Ukrainian women was already one of Europe’s lowest.