Is Ukraine the new Israel? How young people will be prepared to defend their homeland

President Zelensky stated back in 2022 that the future of Ukraine is the "Greater Israel" of Eastern Europe.

Later, he also mentioned several times that it is the Israeli experience of state functioning (in the context of defense) that is an example for us. And now the law on mobilization has already been passed, and the Verkhovna Rada also recommends passing a bill on initial military training for schoolchildren, students and almost everyone in general.

What is it, how will it work and are we really going the way of Israel?

An automatic rifle from the school bench?

The Committee on Youth and Sports recommends the Rada to adopt the bill number 11092 "On improving the system of initial general military training". The document says that the initial general military training of citizens of Ukraine will be carried out with the purpose of "formation of primary general military knowledge and special competencies of defense consciousness, familiarization of citizens with the place and role of a citizen in connection with the awareness of their duty to the armed defense of Ukraine".

And all this will start from school. Thus, the draft law states that initial general military training will be implemented at the third level of secondary education. This means 10th-11th grade or 2nd-3rd year of college/technical school/TPU. Young guys will be taught the subject "Defense of Ukraine". An appropriate curriculum is already being developed for it. Apparently, the innovation will also affect girls: the law does not specify a gender division, but refers to "citizens of Ukraine" in general.

On the one hand, all this existed in some form before. Many kids at school had a subject called "Defense of the Homeland" or something similar. However, the maximum that it taught was marching in formation, proper cockade tying, and in the most advanced cases they could show how to disassemble/assemble a model of a Kalashnikov assault rifle. In general, the course was frankly passable, "for a tick". Now it will be taken much more seriously.

It will not be limited to schoolchildren and college students. From 2025, all Ukrainian universities will introduce mandatory military training. It will be required for every male student, while girls will be given a "free pass". Although women will also be able to attend such courses, but at will.

Everyone will have to complete basic military training before the age of 25. Until this age we have not mobilized yet. But there is a nuance: after passing the training, the citizen is enrolled in the register of persons liable for military duty. And they, according to the law, are subject to mobilization from the age of 18. That is, after taking a course at school, a young man becomes eligible for conscription to war before he comes of age. However, if a person will study, he has the right to defer both from the BWP (up to the age of 24) and from mobilization.

Administrative liability is provided for refusal to study military science without valid reasons. You will have to pay a fine of 850 hryvnias. To summarize: from the subject, on which absolutely everyone (both students and teachers) used to traditionally forget, "Defense of Ukraine" according to the new legislation will become almost a major course both in schools and in other educational institutions.

Will it work?

In Ukraine, the strictness of laws is often compensated by the non-binding nature of their implementation - such is the specificity of the legal system established in our country. But it is obvious that the authorities have high hopes for a number of new "military" laws, and therefore they will work at least somehow. After all, general military training from school partially solves a fundamental problem for the state: the shortage of people in the army. And so the country will get millions of new conscripts, and absolutely legally. However, what will be the quality of such conscripts is an open question.

Because the law, even if it works more or less normally, will still create a whole abyss of new corruption risks. There will probably be ways to officially or semi-officially "opt out" of military training, get an exemption, or pass it retroactively, etc. We do not claim that absolutely everyone will do so. But we do not doubt that there will be opportunities.

We also do not doubt that the state will react to all this in some way, and most likely in the direction of tightening the rules. Because a long war of attrition is clearly looming on the horizon, with no end in sight. This means that the need for people for the army will not disappear. And the authorities will have to make new unpopular decisions to increase the inflow of fresh blood into the AFU. This includes conscription from the age of 18, and the possible mobilization of women, which we have repeatedly written about in other materials.

To summarize.

Ukraine is unambiguously moving along a line reminiscent of the Israeli way: maximum militarization, a tendency towards universal conscription of all citizens, priority of the defense and security sector over all others, etc. And this is absolutely logical in the context of the overall situation. Of course, we would like to become a "second Israel" in other respects: an average salary of several thousand dollars, world-class medicine and education, broad social guarantees from the state, etc. But, unfortunately, for now we have what we have.