this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 100 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Zelensky signed several laws on mobilization on April 2, one of which lowered the minimum age of compulsory military service from 27 to 25, making men eligible for the draft from age 25.

The current draft age in the USA is 18-25.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Can't wait to hear ill-informed critics explain how evil Zelenskyy is for sending children to war

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

He's evil for sending people to war who don't want to go.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Meanwhile isn’t the US drafting at 18+ also?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yes, it's 18 here.

I was a bit worried when I saw the headline for that reason. I forgot the US is an outlier with being perfectly OK with sending kids to war before they can legally drink alcohol

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

It used to be that the draft age was lower than the voting age in many states. There was a constitutional amendment during the US-Vietnam War to drop the voting age to 18 because if you're old enough to be forced to fight in a war, you're old enough to have a say in the war.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Used to be if you could go to war you could drink on base, but they took that away years ago.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They can but haven’t since the Vietnam war.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago

Ah so our active age is what, like 20, 21?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago (2 children)

In fairness, the US isn't drafting people, let alone consigning draftees to certain death like Zelensky here is doing. It's probably my prejudice from the US draft age, but I'm surprised the minimum is so high still in Ukraine considering how desperate they are to field more men.

Obviously the US consigns plenty of people to certain death, but not by drafting them.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I was just kind of shocked that their conscription age was so high considering the US draft age ends at their new low end. When I first read the headline I assumed they were going to start drafting 16 year olds.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago

Me too, but I'd guess that it's because Ukraine is a somewhat younger country, since the US stopped using the draft in '73, about two decades before the current Ukrainian government was established, so they are operating on very different standards. Just a guess, though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

WW2 left the Soviet Union without a generation of men which led to all kinds of problems after the war. It's a lesson hard learnt. Your men need to breed before they go to war and die. Ukraine knows this and hence they keep the draft age higher.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Their demographics are fucked and the largest group of men are middle aged. Weird population age densities were caused by all the bad living in the 90’s.