Ukraine’s new draft worries young people

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine likely changed the fate of thousands of Ukrainian men when he signed a law lowering the draft age from 27 to 25 this month, more than two years after Russia began its full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian forces are struggling to contain the much larger Russian army and desperately need to replenish their ranks. Now many of the young people who remain in Ukraine (thousands of others have fled the country illegally) worry about their future.

New York Times journalists spoke with Ukrainian men who could be affected by the change.

Yegor Khomchenko, owner of a communal bakery in eastern Ukraine who will turn 25 next month, said he had many friends who had gone to war.

But he said his wife, Amelia, had told him she would “do everything I could to keep them from taking me” if he was drafted.

“I’m worried, even a little scared,” Khomchenko said. “But everything will be as God planned.”

Khomchenko lives in Druzhkivka, an industrial city in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Russia has bombarded the city with missiles and artillery, but life goes on, although most nights you can still hear the roar of fighting on the nearby front line. At the beginning of the war, his wife, then pregnant, traveled to the city of Dnipro, in central Ukraine. She returned home after giving birth to her son.

“She feels quite calm here because our family is united. “We cannot imagine living apart and we do not know how people separated by war for months and years can cope with this terrible experience,” she stated. “Of course, when there are bombings in Druzhkivka, Amelia gets scared, but together we are strong,” she added.

Nestor Babskyi, 23, a physiotherapist at a rehabilitation center in western Ukraine, sees several Ukrainian soldiers every day who have been wounded and maimed by the war. He said he felt guilty for not having served himself and a sense of fear for what awaited him.

“At first,” Babskyi said, “I was terrified of going to war, but now I’m calm about it.”

The wounded soldiers “have played their part and gone back to living their lives, so I’m waiting for my time to come.” And he added: “I realize that I will definitely be more useful there than here. This thought calms me down.”

Oleksandr Manchenko, 26, a journalist from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, who has covered the war, noted the difficult calculus President Zelensky had likely faced in lowering the draft age.

“Young people are the future, no matter how trite it may seem,” Manchenko said.

“Maybe you thought Ukraine could do without mobilizing young people, but apparently the military situation does not allow us that luxury,” he said.

Manchenko said he respected the bravery of those who enlisted in the early days of the war. “Thanks to them we survived,” he said, adding that he doubted his own courage and did not want to fight.

“Also, I want to continue doing what I am doing because I believe that my work is also important,” he said. “But I am not going to flee from the mobilization and hide. So we will see how my destiny unfolds.”

Maksym Sukhyi, 27, a dental technician in the Ukrainian capital, kyiv, had already reached the minimum recruitment age when the new law was signed on April 3. He said that he had been training to go to war since August 2022, but that he had not yet enlisted.

He’s been looking for a unit to join while learning about weapons and tactics at a camp on the weekends and going to the gym.

Training in Ukrainian military units is often uneven at best, and men who are conscripted (rather than those who join voluntarily) are often assigned to the infantry. Those ground troops often perform the most difficult task: sitting in trenches under heavy bombardment and attacking enemy lines if necessary.

Sukhyi said he was preparing for such possibilities.

“I need to be as professional as possible. If I go to war, I also want to be a professional there,” he stated. “Therefore, I am preparing for a possible mobilization as much as time and financial resources allow. “If I end up in war, I don’t want to be someone who doesn’t know anything.”

Vasyl Vanzhurak, 24, works in a sawmill in the Carpathians, western Ukraine. He said he had wanted to enlist, but his father went off to fight, leaving him in the care of his mother and other relatives during the first months of the war.

“I’m worried? Yes and no,” Vanzhurak said. “My parents are more worried about me going to the army than I am.”

He said he realized that with such a brutal war going on, “they still need people there.”

Denys Yemets, an electrician at a steel plant in southern Ukraine, turned 25 last month. He said he wasn’t too concerned about the change in the draft age because he believed it was more needed in the steel mill than in the military. But if they called him, he would go fight, he said.

“I have already gotten used to the idea that this war, unfortunately, will last a long time,” he said. “At first we all hoped that this would end quickly, but then it turned out that the reality is much harsher.”

Mr. Demets said that his uncle and stepfather, who had already fought in the war, had discouraged him from fighting. “They really didn’t want me to follow in his footsteps and serve in the military,” he said.

“I am the only male descendant left in the family and they are very worried that I am not well,” he said. “They would definitely want me to stay at the plant and continue to support my mother, my aunt and my grandmother.”

Generations of Ukrainians were disrupted when Russia invaded. As the war continues with no end in sight, Ukraine’s youngest people find themselves in increasing danger, at risk of being drawn into the carnage of ground combat as they defend their homeland.

At the front, their fate will be decided by, as the English First World War poet Wilfred Owen once wrote, “the strange arithmetic of chance.”