Parliament's Defence Committee says conscription age reduction depends on military leadership requests and hostilities nature

Further plans to reduce conscription age in Ukraine will depend on the military leadership requests and the way the war goes.

Source: Serhii Rakhmanin, Member of the Committee on National Security, Defence and Intelligence, in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda

Quote: "First of all, we need to wait for adopted changes [reducing the conscription age to 25 years – ed.] to take effect. So far, even that has not been done.

If this happens, the military can estimate the [size of] benefit they will actually get to the mobilisation resource, and whether or not it is worth reducing the conscription age further."

Details: Rakhmanin said the need for such conscripts arises from two reasons: certain types of combat operations require younger soldiers, as does the technological progress in the current war.

Background:

• At the end of May, the Verkhovna Rada reduced the maximum age for citizens to be registered as military conscripts from 27 to 25. However, the President has not yet signed this law, so the changes have not yet taken effect.
• In early October, Ben Wallace, former UK Secretary of State for Defence, called on the Ukrainian authorities to change their approach to mobilisation, "The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelenskyy’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but the fact is that Russia is mobilising the whole country by stealth. Putin knows a pause will hand him time to build a new army. So just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilisation".

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