this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Letting out men aged 18-22 was a really smart play by the government. These are the people who were underaged back in February 2022, and it would've been a very heavy mental ask for their parents to switch from the mindset of "I need to protect my children from the war" to a "my grown adults need to protect me" one. This would've been the prime audience for a civil uprising.
In addition it creates the pressure of a fresh influx of immigrants to EU countries, of underqualified men at that, the most vilified category that fuels anti-immigrant sentiment. This is bound to shift the attitude of Europeans towards all the refugees they took in so far, and already Germany polls at 62% in favor of sending conscription-aged men back to Ukraine. If they actually manage to get the 25+ ones back at the cost of losing the youngest slice - that's millions of fresh recruits without pushing the boundaries of what Ukrainians at home can tolerate by further lowering conscription age.
EU armies will probably start recruiting them because their own citizens won't join up. They'll be happy to join up for 3 meals and a place to stay and enough pocket money to get laid on the weekend because the alternative is going to the front in ukraine.
I mean, unless the EU countries start rounding up Ukrainians by the tens of thousands, they won't be much help in the war.
And, even if they did, it'd take a loooong while to get them captured and sent here, not to mention how extremely demoralized this new batch of troops would be (even more so than the current army). Too little too late.