Svitlana Pokalchuk sent her two teenage sons abroad so that they could avoid military service in Ukraine when they came of age.
“I know how many boys are no longer with us,” Pokalchuk told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. “You see Facebook, how many people are looking for their relatives and, as a mother, I feel grief. Just grief.”
She is not alone.
The United States, Kyiv's main military backer, has called on Ukraine to lower the conscription age from 25 to 18 as the country struggles to fend off advancing Russian forces amid a shortage of new recruits.
That has led some Ukrainian families to send their sons overseas to avoid conscription.
“The first reason is their [immediate] security," said Pokalchuk. "For a mother it's the most important thing. And secondly, the draft age. They are still young and there is no proper military training.”
In April, Ukraine reduced the mobilization age from 27 to 25. But in November 2024, the Biden administration pushed Ukraine to lower the draft age again -- this time, to 18. On January 12, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s designated national-security adviser Mike Waltz repeated the message.
'Children To The Slaughter'
Reactions on the streets of Kyiv were entirely negative.
“I’m a mother and a grandmother and I am categorically against it,” one woman told Current Time.
“At 18 years old, they are children. They’d be cannon fodder, children sent to the slaughter,” she added.
Another woman said “there will be nobody left to have babies,” tapping into a deep-seated concern that goes to the heart of opposition to the proposal.
The 18-25 age group is the weakest of Ukraine’s working age demographics. A dramatic fall in the birth rate in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, continued into the 2000s amid ongoing economic hardship.
“Our lowest birth rate in history was in 2001,” says Oleksandr Hladun, deputy director at the Ukrainian Academy of Science’s Demography Institute. “This contingent is currently the smallest. And this means that in 25-30 years even fewer children will be born.”
Official data has revealed what is called the “demographic gap.” In fact, the real population figures are lower still, as the population was further diminished by emigration fueled first by economic factors and then by war.
Hladun points to studies showing that 25 percent of Ukrainian high school students wish to continue their studies abroad.
“Perhaps this will provoke some [other] part of the population to leave, to take their children abroad.”
No stigma
Resistance to conscription generally has been driven by reports of corruption at draft offices and the well-connected finding legal ways to avoid being called up. Last year, investigations revealed government officials had evaded military service by falsely claiming disability benefits.
An opinion poll in June 2024 found that 46 percent of Ukrainians think there is no shame in being a draft dodger, while 25 percent of respondents said they were unable to answer the question.
Perhaps as a result of this atmosphere, political reaction to lowering the recruitment age has been negative, too.
In December 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made scathing remarks to journalists during a visit to Brussels. The problem, he suggested, was not troop numbers but insufficient arms and equipment.
Zelenskiy has long called on Kyiv's Western allies to increase weapons supplies to Ukraine.
“Tell me please: if a person is in front of you, without arms, what is the difference if he is 20 or 30 if he is not armed? There is no difference,” the president said last month.
But Zelenskiy has also admitted that the army needs younger fighters, and videos of Ukrainian press gangs dragging men off the streets underline the problem.
Political pressure may force Zelenskiy to change his mind. Trump has already made it amply clear that he is not inclined to support Ukraine militarily and wants to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate peace.
As Zelenskiy tries to keep Trump’s favor, he may be forced to make concessions somewhere.
