On his latest of far too many visits to Ukraine, Sen. Lindsey Graham on Monday urged legislators to expand the pool of citizens subject to being drafted and thrown into the country’s losing war against Russia, saying, “We need more people in the line.”
The Ukrainian military accepts voluntary enlistments from those 18 and older. However, in stark contrast to Americans’ experience with military drafts, Ukraine exempts men under 27 from being conscripted. Since December, the country’s legislature has been considering lowering the minimum draft age to 25, to meet the military’s projected need for upwards of a half-million more soldiers.
“I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe [conscription age starts] at 27,” Graham told the press. “You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.”
Of course, Ukrainians are generally only “fighting for their lives” once they’re shipped east to fight an American-cultivated proxy war over territory that, as David Stockman puts it, “has been either a Russian vassal or appendage for centuries and where the term ‘Ukraine’ actually means ‘borderlands’ in Russian.”
Hellbound and Down 