The Average Age of The Ukrainian Soldier Is 43: So Why Are We Surprised That The War With Russia Is Interminable?

Yet another reason to sue for peace..

Ruslan Alesko via Pexels

Wars throughout history have been instigated by old men and waged on the fields and in the trenches by young men.

And when conscription into the armed forces was mandatory, young men in their late teens and early twenties were usually drafted in large numbers for obvious reasons: their youth and dynamism.

This was true across Europe and Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries, when major wars were fought and it was certainly true of the United States in all of the wars it has undertaken in its history.

Films made about war have always made a point of highlighting the youth of those who were engaged in the business of vanquishing their opponents.

But this isn’t the case with Ukraine.

Since fighting began between the neighbours in Eurasia nearly two years ago, we have had huge numbers of middle-aged Ukrainian men volunteering (and some forcibly made) to take up arms against the enemy.

But we have also seen more than 650,000 men of fighting age flee from Ukraine, in the last 24 months too.