Ukraine enters 2025 facing a critical shortage of young troops

Ukraine enters 2025 facing a critical shortage of young troops

April 2025. Three years into the war, the Ukrainian front rests on a contradiction that can no longer be disguised: fewer and fewer men of military age, and more and more territory lost. The figures handled by Kyiv's own government —which leak out only in dribs and drabs— paint a picture in which the lack of replacements weighs as heavily as Russian artillery. Ukraine's birth rate, below one child per woman and below 0.5 in major cities such as Kyiv or Kharkiv, guarantees there will be no replacement generation for two decades. Meanwhile, Russia, with five times the population, offsets its own shortfalls with external recruitment and a numerical superiority it does not need to hide.

The problem is not just how many men are left, but how many can fight. The average age of the Ukrainian soldier exceeds 45 in many units, and the few young men aged 18 to 24 who remain are a minority the state cannot mobilize without risking economic collapse. A calculation circulating among military analysts puts the number of young people needed for a single operational breakthrough at at least 200,000. No country is willing to provide them. Colombian mercenaries, expensive and scarce, amount to only a few thousand.

Kursk: the offensive meant to compensate and ended up making things worse

The incursion into Russia's Kursk region was born with a clear objective: trading Russian territory for the Donbas, Crimea or the Sea of Azov corridor in a hypothetical negotiation. The operation was meant to turn a defeat into an honorable exit. The result, as of spring 2025, is the opposite: Russian forces have pushed the Ukrainians out of most of the occupied zone and, in the process, have advanced inside Ukraine. What was gained in image was lost in kilometers.

The pattern repeats on other fronts. In Pokrovsk, minor Ukrainian advances have been recorded, insufficient to make up for what was lost in 2023 and 2024. The offensive launched in the Belgorod region has also failed to deliver the expected results. Ukraine's strategy is increasingly limited to holding out and withdrawing when a position becomes indefensible. It is not a disorderly retreat, but it is a continuous cession of territory that erodes any narrative of victory.

Can Ukraine sustain the war without mobilizing its youth?

The short answer is no, at least not at the current intensity. The Ukrainian government has resisted pressure to lower the recruitment age below 25, aware that mobilizing the 18-to-24 age group would empty the cities and put the economy at risk. But that resistance has a direct military cost: less infantry, more aged units and a replacement capacity that is running out.

In February and March 2025, only 250 young people aged 18 to 24 signed voluntary contracts, despite the financial incentives offered. The official target for the year as a whole is 30,000 recruits per month, of whom 8,000 would be women. The numbers do not add up. Of the roughly 2.5 million men remaining in Ukraine, one million are exempt because they hold essential jobs, half a million have some form of disability, and the rest are hiding or crossing the border at a rate of about 2,000 per day. Every day that passes, the pool of potential recruits shrinks.

Russian numerical superiority is not a trick, it is doctrine

Russia faces a similar demographic problem, but manages it with a structural advantage: five times the population and the ability to recruit abroad. Its losses are high, but theoretically absorbable within a doctrine that has not hesitated to sacrifice personnel to gain meters. Artillery and FAB glide bombs —from the 250-kilogram versions up to the 9,000-kilogram ones— remain its main tool of attrition, even if their precision and availability are far from unlimited. Only the Su-34 can drop the heaviest versions, and the safe bases are more than 400 kilometers from the front.

The debate over the exchange of casualties is far from settled. Some argue that Ukrainian losses are eight times higher than Russia's, while others claim the opposite based on body exchanges. A recent episode, with 909 Ukrainian bodies handed over against 41 Russian ones, fuels the thesis that the real ratio is very different from what is being reported. The discrepancy is not minor: it defines who can hold out longer.

Drones and robotization: the bet on avoiding dependence on flesh and blood

The only path some analyses consider viable for Ukraine is to intensify the drone-ization of the front and robotize its defense. Drones have proven to be a relatively cheap force multiplier, and a defense based on mines and uncrewed systems can be scaled up to rely less and less on direct human intervention. The problem is that Ukraine lacks sufficient ballistic capabilities to strike deep into Russian territory at the level Russia strikes Ukraine. The priority, according to this school of thought, would be to streamline missile projects and focus on the most promising ones.

In any case, the war does not appear to be heading toward a quick end. A scenario of ten years of conflict would require completely inverting the army's composition, with a majority female presence in the second half. It is an extreme hypothesis, but one already openly discussed. What no one disputes is that Ukraine, as it was before February 2022, no longer exists.