NEW YORK, April 11./TASS/. The share of young men aged between 20 and 30 in Ukraine’s demographic structure has dropped to its lowest figure in the history of the country, not a good sign for the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian army, The New York Times said.
According to it, "the roughly one million men who serve in Ukraine’s army are battered and exhausted." From 1990 to 2024, the share of young Ukrainians aged between 20 and 30 dropped more than twofold, the paper writes citing United Nations’ data. This situation seriously undermines the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian army, where young men under 30 years of age are the backbone. In this situation, "Ukraine must balance the need to counter a relentless Russian offensive by adding more troops against the risk of hollowing out an entire generation," NYT said.
On April 2, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed laws on lowering the draft age from 27 to 25, on the elimination of the term 'restricted suitability [for military service]' and on creating an electronic list of persons liable for military service. Verkhovna Rada deputy Irina Gerashchenko explained that with these three documents the authorities have actually resolved the issues that they tried to ram through the legislature in the unpopular bill.
Alexander Dudchak, a leading researcher at the Institute of CIS countries and an expert with the Other Ukraine movement, told TASS that the decision to lower the draft age to 25 may be prompted only by the desire to please Kiev's Western sponsors. In recent months, the Ukrainian and Western media have repeatedly noted that the Ukrainian army was undermanned.