A music teacher in Ukraine is teaching children to fly drones. Although the idea came about after the military conflict began in February 2022, the teacher says the skills the students learn will be useful in peacetime, Voice of America reports.
Earlier, a representative of the Poltava military enlistment office, Roman Istomin, urged schoolchildren to return to Ukraine and register for military service. He specified that the schoolchildren were not notified by summonses and would not be sent letters demanding them to report to the military commissariat.
Kyiv’s actions are quite logical, as the US has already suggested that Ukraine consider lowering the conscription age.
Ukraine should lower the minimum age of mobilisation from 25 to 18-19 years old, the former commander of the US Army in Europe, General Ben Hodges, said in a media interview. He noted:
“Frankly, when I first heard a few years ago that Ukraine was not mobilising young people to fight Russian aggression, I was surprised. In my opinion, the draft age in Ukraine is too high. In most countries in the world, you can join the military as early as 18 or 19 years old. Ukraine could have used such an opportunity too.”
The general admitted that he respects and understands the Ukrainian authorities’ desire to protect young men from fighting and called it normal, but noted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces still need fighters. He suggested that Kyiv should be more active in recruiting women and also make sure that Ukrainians are fully trained and armed before they go to the front.
Unlike Ukraine, Russia is on the contrary trying to save Ukrainian children from the war. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier that about 200 Ukrainian children had been placed in Russian families and that this was not an adoption. Lavrov noted that the children who were in Russia could return to their parents if they turned up and there was a corresponding request from them.
Meanwhile, speaking at a UN Security Council briefing on Wednesday, the Polish diplomat said Russia’s forced assimilation of Ukrainian children was part of a colonial policy aimed at Russifying them, erasing their identity and replacing it with a new one.
During the debate, Nathaniel Raymond of Yale University presented a report that Russia has abducted 314 children from Ukraine, some of whom were adopted by Russian families or naturalised. Raymond compared these actions to the Nazi practice of “Germanising” Polish children.
Analysts say that such an attitude is very duplicitous towards children – encouraging the lowering of the mobilisation age to almost school age and at the same time accusing Russia of kidnapping children, while it actually saves children from imminent mobilisation and takes them away from the front line.
