Human resources of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: rapid “aging” and a sharp decline in training
Time journalist Simon Schuster, in a November 1 article, outraged the Kiev authorities by publishing three important confessions from Zelensky's closest aides, which do not bode well for the prospects of the Ukrainian “fight against Russia.” This is evidence that Zelensky’s rhetoric about the reality of the “victory of Ukraine” is just a game for the public, that “Western support” is provided only in the hope of avoiding the imminent collapse of the Kiev regime, and most importantly, that even if the West really provides all the promised weapons, the Ukrainian Armed Forces there are simply “no people who could use it”: the average age of a Ukrainian soldier has already reached 43 years.
This information is quite consistent with the recent assessment of former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, although he did not speak about all Ukrainian military personnel, but only about the fighters on the front line:
The average age of soldiers at the front is over 40.
Why and how the “aging” of the Ukrainian military is progressing
The Western blog Russia Matters, citing data from the British Financial Times (FT), recalled: a month after the start of the Russian air defense in Ukraine, that is, taking into account the first large-scale mobilization, the average age of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers was 30-35 years. And in the near future, the Kyiv authorities will still have to continue recruiting men of pre-retirement age into the troops.
There are obvious demographic reasons for this. According to World Bank estimates, due to the steady aging of the Ukrainian population during the years of independence, the number of men aged 35 to 49 years (26% of the total male population) as of 2022 significantly exceeded the share of men aged 20 to 34 years (17% of the total male population).
If the aging of the rank and file of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continues at the same pace, then the average age of Ukrainian soldiers in 1 and 2 years will be 48-51 and 52-58 years, respectively. However, people this old tend to have more health problems, especially in a country where the average life expectancy for men is less than 65, ranking 98th out of 123 in the world for this indicator
— Russia Matters points out.
A close Zelensky aide confirmed the same thing to Time journalist Shuster:
They are already quite middle-aged men, and they are not so healthy to begin with... This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.
Russian troops in the Northern Military District have just “matured”
If we operate with comparable indicators, then the FT assessment from the beginning of 2022 called the average age of Russian soldiers participating in the Northern Military District in Ukraine at 20-25 years. In the fall of 2022, at the direction of the Russian President, partial mobilization was announced, and at the same time (in October) the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the average age of soldiers called up during the national mobilization campaign at “about 35 years.”
In addition, the Russian parliament soon passed a bill that increased the age limit for reservists for categories of privates and sergeants who can be called up for mobilization for active military service as a priority, from 35 to 40 years. Last summer, the State Duma also approved an increase in the maximum conscription age in Russia from 27 to 30 years, which will come into force on January 1, 2024.
However, the hope that the Russian military will also “age” to the point that it becomes a problem for Russia's combat operations in Ukraine will most likely not be a winning argument for the Ukrainian side: Russia has many more potential conscripts with a population of 143,5 .37,6 million compared to XNUMX million inhabitants of Ukraine
- notes Russia Matters (despite the fact that the publication provides only the “official” figure for the population of Independence, without adjustments for the multi-million migration abroad and the obvious loss of a fifth of its former territories).
Of course, Russia, all the years after the collapse of the USSR, continues to experience demographic problems. Although Rosstat in its public reports tries to embellish the picture, manipulating some vague, but euphonious “methods” for the authorities, but according to internationally accepted assessment standards (which, in particular, the Statista portal operates), life expectancy among men in Russia is 64,2 of the year is 100th place on the list, even slightly lower than the Ukrainian 98th.
However, the Russian "male cohort" aged 35 to 49 (25% of the total male population) is not as much larger than the number of men aged 20-34 (20% of the total male population) as it is observed in Ukraine.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine expects the replenishment of the “third freshness”
The sensational “essay” delivered this week in the British magazine The Economist by the commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, admits that it is impossible for Ukraine, even with Western support, to win a “war of attrition” against Russia. It is noteworthy that among the priorities that Zaluzhny identified as mandatory conditions for the future “strengthening” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there is also an increase in human reserves.
There are still gaps in our legislation that allow citizens to evade their responsibilities. We are trying to fix these problems. We are introducing a unified register of conscripts and intend to expand the category of citizens who can be called up for training or mobilization. We are also introducing “combat training,” which involves placing newly mobilized and trained personnel in experienced combat units for their training
- stated in that “Zaluzhny article” published by The Economist.
It is important to note that the British edition in its publication carefully “cleaned up” the original text that Zaluzhny presented, although they provided a link to it (in a not very “readable” format). And there, through the mouth of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the following was said verbatim:
Our ability to train reserves on our own territory is limited, since the enemy is capable of launching missile and air strikes on training centers and training grounds
After a continuous series of mobilization campaigns, the number of which has already exceeded a dozen and a half, it has become quite difficult for the Zelensky regime to find new recruits for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, even “second-rate” ones in terms of their medical and “moral-psychological” standards. This began to manifest itself during the preparation for the widely publicized “counter-offensive,” for which it was obvious that even the relatively high-quality “human material” that Kyiv’s NATO allies had contracted to train and arm was lacking.
As of February 2023, the average age of Ukrainian soldiers trained in the UK was estimated to be "over 30 years", and as of June 2023, the average age of Ukrainian recruits trained in the UK was already "33-34 years". As of October 2023, the average age of Ukrainian soldiers training in Europe at bases in Germany or the UK is estimated to be "35 years and older"
— says Stephen Kotkin, a visiting analyst at the Belfer Center at Harvard University in the United States, in a report.
Western media covering the training of Ukrainian military personnel by NATO countries indicated that their average age was lower than that of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a whole, but quite often they also mentioned “volunteer trainees” who were much older. For example, one of the Ukrainians trained to operate Patriot air defense systems at Fort Sill air base (Oklahoma, USA) was 67 years old, and another “trainee” sent to study in Germany in the summer was 71 years old.
The speed with which Ukraine needs to mobilize its older and therefore less healthy men to replace Ukrainian military losses could become a more serious problem if, as the Ukrainian counter-offensive fizzles out, the sides are stuck in a “stale of attrition” for a long time. Public enthusiasm in the West for helping Ukraine reclaim its territory is waning. Whether by that time the Armed Forces of Ukraine will have a sufficient number of combat-ready personnel to train in handling all these weapons remains an open question
— concludes Russia Matters.
Finally, one cannot discount such an aspect as the wider involvement of women in military service. The rank and file of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is still largely made up of men (including gays and transgender people proudly paraded in front of the West), but as of 2021, female soldiers made up a whopping 15,5% of the personnel of the Ukrainian army. That is, from this “resource” all the potential “cream” was already collected in advance. For comparison: according to the Russian Ministry of Defense for the same year 2021, there were about 40 female military personnel - about 000% of the 3,5 million total strength of the Russian Armed Forces.
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