Ukraine on Wednesday lowered the military conscription age from 27 to 25 in an effort to replenish its depleted ranks after more than two years of war following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The new mobilization law came into force a day after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed it. Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed it last year.
It was not immediately clear why Zelenskyy took so long to sign the measure into law. He didn’t make any public comment about it, and officials did not say how many new soldiers the country expected to gain or for which units.
Conscription has been a sensitive matter in Ukraine for many months amid a growing shortage of infantry on top of a severe ammunition shortfall that has handed Russia the battlefield initiative. Russia’s own problems with manpower and planning have so far prevented it from taking full advantage of its edge.
War, with its life and death seriousness, doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuanced arguments. Those are for peacetime. For now it’s simply Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine the defender, and Ukraine represents western democracy in a part of the world that is known for corrupt oligarchs. We back Ukraine not just because it’s right, but sensible. it’s that simple imo.
Russia doesn’t have Oligarchs it has minor nobles being viceroys, all power is by the grace of the Tsar – it’s even the Tsar’s power that they wield, probably unconstitutional for the Russian president to divide and give out his power and authority like that.
Ukraine still has actual oligarchs, though their influence is waning: Basically, when you’re a shady businessman one of the best strategies is to enjoy parliamentary immunity so those businessmen all sought office but they were never a unified block, they are competitors and often hate each other’s guts. The people thus got to be the kingmaker, could choose their favourite oligarch to run the country. Zelensky got electoral push from one of those Oligarchs because the incumbent Oligarch fucked that one over over some oil deals.
List of current oligarchs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarchs?wprov=sfti1#See_also
List of past Viceroyalties, which seemed to come to an end in early 1900s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_viceroyalties_of_the_Russian_Empire?wprov=sfti1#
I did learn that there’s an actual current Tsar in Russia working to restore Imperialist Russia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchess_Maria_Vladimirovna_of_Russia?wprov=sfti1#Role_in_Russia_and_activities
Haha very funny.
But just to make this clear: The “Russian Oligarch” link you sent starts off with people from the 90s – that generation is gone, replaced by people hand-picked by Putin. They did not become filthily rich and then came to dominate politics, it’s the other way around: Trusted by Putin, they got installed in positions of power which comes with the privilege of skimming off money. That’s the exact same system the Tsars had. Putin knew Prigozhin since the 90s, they were old buddies.
Russia could, in principle, have turned towards an actual oligarchy like Ukraine, the oligarchs certainly tried to, see e.g. Khodorkovsky. In Russia the Siloviki didn’t let that happen, every single one of those oligarchs committed some crime you can nail them for – or not, if they stay in their lane, meaning out of politics. In Ukraine, for one reason or the other, that didn’t happen, they were let into parliament where they then could slowly be disempowered by the people, instead of three letter agency cadres. Which is also how power ultimately ended up with the people in Russia and (broadly speaking) the FSB in Russia.