The Ukrainian Soldier's Average Age Is Older Than 40

Soldiers in Ukraine are veering increasingly older as the country grapples with a shortage of soldiers after roughly 20 months of brutal fighting against Russia. As countless casualties have hampered Ukraine's forces, the average age of a soldier in the country is currently around 43 years old, Time magazine reported a fortnight ago.

That average is up by nearly 10 years from March 2022, one month after the war began, when the average age of a Ukrainian soldier was between 30 and 35 years old, according to FT.

And as American lawmakers squabble over whether to continue funding Ukraine, however, the country's personnel problems may be more dire than a lack of equipment.

Meaning, even if the Joe Biden administration were to provide Ukraine with all the weapons they promised, a [V]ladimir [Z]elensky aide told Time, Ukraine simply doesn't "have the men to use them".

New Zealand has crowned a bird that grunts, pukes and has a highly unusual repertoire of mating rituals as its bird of the century. [A follow-up to my November 11 post "An American's Aggressive Campaign for Pūteketeke for Bird of the Century"]. 

 

The announcement for the two-week contest's winner, the threatened Australasian crested grebe, or pūteketeke (Scientific name: Podiceps cristatus) was delayed by two days after the competition was inundated with votes.

The competition, launched in 2005, normally attracts just under 60,000 votes but this year those figures leapt to 350,000 across 195 countries, with 290,374 of those going to the pūteketeke. 

Thousands of fraudulent votes had to be weeded out, including 40,000 votes cast by a single person for the tawaki piki toka or eastern rockhopper penguin (Scientific name: Eudyptes chrysocome filholi)

New Zealand’s national bird, the North Island brown kiwi (Scientific name: Apteryx mantelli) came second on 12,904 votes, while the world’s only alpine parrot, the kea (Scientific name: Nestor notabilis) came third with 12,060 votes.