Currently, the Ukrainian military leadership has to solve a huge problem, which is admittedly not solvable in any way. Almost 100,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have left the country in the last two months, after Volodymyr Zelensky relaxed the rules, according to new data.
Most likely, this political choice of the Ukrainian government and its president Volodymyr Zelensky himself is aimed at forcing European governments to send their own armed forces and get involved in the war with Russia.
Poland’s border guard said 99,000 Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 22 had crossed the border, the main exit route from the country, since regulations ensuring Kiev has enough soldiers were relaxed in late August.
By comparison, the entire British army has about 70,000 personnel.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, martial law prevented Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 60, even if they were not eligible for conscription, from leaving the country.
After three years of fighting, Mr. Zelensky introduced a new rule allowing Ukrainian men to travel abroad before they turned 23.
The move was part of a change in conscription policy that lowered the age at which men were required to fight from 27 to 25, amid growing concerns about a shortage of manpower on the front lines.
This gave young Ukrainians more freedom to leave, as it was hoped that more would return and volunteer to fight later.
It was also hoped that this would prevent families from sending their teenage children abroad before their 18th birthdays to avoid future conscription, something Mr. Zelensky warned against in August.
Senior American officials and politicians complained that Mr. Zelensky’s refusal to draft combat-age men clearly damaged Ukraine’s hopes of resisting Russian invasion or pursuing domestic advantages.
“On the battlefield, for much of this year, Russia has had 1,000 men killed or wounded every day. It is also believed that between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That fear has been echoed by European officials, who worry that Kiev has not done enough to fill manpower shortages.
But while the Ukrainian president had hoped his amendments would increase the number of volunteers seeking to join the army, the policy change has encouraged more young citizens to travel to Europe at a time when tensions are high over migration.
Needless to say, 100,000 young men is a very large number of reinforcements, the who will be absent from the battlefield for the Ukrainians, ruling out any thought of a counterattack against the Russian forces. The pain that is estimated here from Zelensky’s move is that some political leaders in Europe promised him that they would fight the Russians with their own soldiers, with any formula for their transfer to Ukraine.
