Eight-year-old Ukrainian gets conscription notice
By IANSWednesday, April 21, 2010
Moscow, April 22 (IANS/RIA Novosti) No kidding! Age no bar for conscription. It was a shock for the Ukrainian parents whose eight-year-old son has been ordered to serve the country’s armed forces.
The boy in the southwestern Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankovsk has received a notification that he is to be conscripted to the army, UNIAN news agency reported Wednesday.
“At first, my wife and I were shocked by the draft notice, and then we laughed. We immediately informed the military authorities they have sent the conscription to the wrong person, but that did not work out,” the father of the ‘conscript’ told the news agency.
On April 19, the day when the conscription was to take place, the family went to the military authorities and presented their son’s birth certificate showing that Misha was born in 2001.
The military authorities have so far refused to give comments.
In Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a young man can be conscripted at the age of 18.
–IANS/RIA Novosti
