Ukraine To Allow More Young Men To Leave, Despite Manpower Crisis

Ukraine is poised to lose yet more manpower, as every young man of ability or means will likely seek to flee instead of being forcibly recruited into the military when they become eligible.

Ukrainian media is confirming a major change in the country’s wartime martial law policies: “Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers has revised travel rules and allowed men aged 18 to 22 to cross the border, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Telegram on Aug. 26.”

Up until now, men who were aged 18 to 60 have been prohibited from leaving the war-ravaged nation since the start of the full invasion of February 2022, though with some rare exceptions.

While men aged 25 to 60 can be conscripted into the military and sent to the front lines, men 24 and under still cannot. This has been hugely controversial as even US members of Congress have complained that Washington is sinking billions into the war effort against Russia, and Kiev won’t even tap into its most eligible fighting-age demographic.

But if men aged 18 to 22 are now permitted to cross the border – they likely will and in droves, especially as they get closer to the age of conscription, and given the grinding war doesn’t look to abate anytime soon.

The New York Times has explained some of the reasoning for the change as follows:

Over the last three years, many families sent their teenage sons out of the country before they turned 18, to avoid having them eventually conscripted into what has become a grinding war of attrition with high casualty rates.

Announcing the change on Tuesday, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the change would allow young men to travel and study abroad without feeling that they had to leave to avoid the draft. “We want Ukrainians to maintain as many ties with Ukraine as possible,” she said.

Looming heavy in the backdrop is that over in Donetsk and now Dnipropetrovsk region Russian forces have been making steady gains, forcing a slow Ukrainian retreat. Also, recruitment and conscription methods have continued to be harsh.

Recent Western media reports have begun picking up on the increasingly ineffective, wasteful tactics of Ukrainian military commanders.

For example, soldiers interviewed by the The Wall Street Journal earlier this month described large-scale meatgrinder type tactics of blindly being sent on suicidal frontal assaults while officers are being denied permission to withdraw from dangerous positions.

The consistent commentary on the war has long been that while Russia might have the manpower to do these old ‘war of attrition’ tactics, Ukraine certainly does not.