Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill on Tuesday April 2 providing for lowering the age of military mobilization from 27 to 25, while the armed forces lack the men to face the invasion Russian. A measure which comes into force this Wednesday after months of debate.
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This bill, which was voted on a year ago by the deputies, and which was until then awaiting promulgation at the presidency, comes into force from this Wednesday, April 3, indicated the Rada, the Parliament Ukrainian, on its website. The Ukrainian government must then bring, within six months, the various regulatory texts into compliance with the new age of mobilization.
Enlistment in the army has been debated for months in Ukraine. The Ukrainian army has suffered losses, the extent of which is kept secret, and is struggling today, unlike at the start of the conflict, to find volunteers for the front. The Rada had voted on first reading in February a series of measures intended to facilitate mobilization, after a first draft prepared by the government was sent back for rewriting a few weeks earlier.
Read alsoThe draft law on mobilization agitates and questions Ukrainian society
Volodymyr Zelensky said in December 2023 that the army had offered to mobilize up to 500,000 additional people, a number since revised downward by the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Syrsky.
Problematic enrollment system
The current enrollment system attracts most of the criticism. It is considered, at best, opaque and inconsistent. At worst, discriminatory and corrupt. Because the selection of conscripts is based on population censuses, which have been notoriously imprecise since the mid-2000s.
In some regions, records are not up to date and age classes are incomplete. Some people in their thirties, for example, do not appear on the lists. Worse, the richest sometimes seem to escape the call, which fuels suspicions and accusations of corruption. In August, Volodymyr Zelensky made a big sweep by changing everything within the territorial recruitment centers.
Furthermore, voices are also being raised to demand a demobilization of those who have been at the front for a long time. The platoons are exhausted and depleted, sometimes on the front for two years, without any relief. The transition from 27 to 25 years old must take mobilization to a new level.
Read alsoFor the wives of Ukrainian soldiers still at the front, demobilization must take place quickly