Facing a demographic catastrophe, Ukraine is paying for troops to freeze sperm | Hacker News Reader

Facing a demographic catastrophe, Ukraine is paying for troops to freeze sperm

bbc.com

70 pointstartoran93 comments

> Private fertility clinics began offering what's known as crypto preservation to servicemen and women in 2022 at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

I'm pretty certain it's "cryo" and not "crypto". Am I wrong, or has the BBC's standards slipped so badly?

I assumed the servicemen's identities were obfuscated.

Genetics live in the block chain now

At least you know it's human slop and not AI slop

The United States military was apparently interested in the idea in a 2022 article, although I can't find any recent information on it.

https://qz.com/610131/the-us-military-will-pay-for-soldiers-...

https://www.progress.org.uk/us-military-to-offer-egg-and-spe...

And Israel has been freezing soldiers' sperm post-mortem: https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5658287/families-of-isr...

I’ve never been bothered by the idea of my corpse being mistreated, but that feels like several bridges too far

presumably this is a flag or box you can check in your military paperwork

this also assumes there is enough of you left to recover, identify, and freeze

They only ask the parents

"The study examined different scenarios, from a "best case", in which the war ended in 2023 without significant further escalation, to a "worst case", ending in 2025 after further escalation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine

People who actually know about the Ukrainian war are countering the idea that Ukraine is running out of men: https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-fewer-soldiers-on...

As they point out: "... the issue of Ukraine’s supposed manpower crisis. This idea has been a key part of the analysis for more than two years now, analysis saying Ukraine was on the verge of military failure."

The Ukrainians are adapting their battle tactics and use of drones to reduce their casualties. The Russians are not, and are suffering huge casualties as a result. Yet no-one is saying the Russian invasion is doomed because they're going to run out of young men.

It is because of the manpower shortage that, credit due, the Ukrainians have come with many innovative ways to use Drones in the ongoing war. But anyone who says Ukraine's military doesn't have a manpower shortage is either ignorant, misinformed or deluded - quite recently Ukraine announced that they would now be recruiting even 60 years old ( https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskyy-signs-law-for-over-6... ). You do not hire old people to fight in a war unless you are desperate. Relying on drone warfare for defence however is still a short-term measure because the Russians too are learning from the Ukrainian and adapting accordingly ( https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/22/europe/russia-rubicon-uni... ).

The Ukrainians have always been inventive. They were the technological center of the Soviet Union.

Slava Ukraini!

"The Russians are suffering huge casualties as a result". This, right here, is the best proof that social media usage is directly proportional with intellectual decline. God save us all!

To be clear: Ukrainian "new" tactic only really help them to reduce casualties on the offensive (estimated at 1 to 1, which is _crazy good_, since Starlink has been deactivated for Russians). Casualties on the defensive side being 2 or even 3 to 1 is expected. And Russia can afford that anyway.

Russia is doomed anyway, unless they manage to disarm their population at the end of the war (and Ukraine will have the same issue), and limit revanchism (Ukraine won't have this issue: if they win, revanchism won't be a societal issue, and if they loose, their revanchism will be an issue for Russia)

what is the point? genetic diversity? women and the length of pregnancy is the limiting bottleneck. Men can have kids very late, and from what I heard, only a certain top percentage of sperm donors' products get picked.

Maybe Ukrainian women want to have kids with their partners who are soldiers? Morale boost, probably a higher willingness to fight to the possible death if you know there's a chance your genes will survive...

It's about more than simply having anyone's children...

It might even just be a cynical motivation to with zero actual intent on using it. Men under pressure to be thrown into the meat grinder will be more encouraged and motivated if they believe their legacy can continue even without what they know is a death sentence.

A cheap morale booster.

> The politicians' initial efforts caused a public outcry though, when they stipulated that all samples should be destroyed on a donor's death.

Looks like you're right.

No, the bottleneck is the desire to have children. Unless you are planning to force the women, you need policies (such as these) that encourage them to want children.

Which requires affordability to own a home sooner rather than later, but here we are closer to 50yr mortgages than closing in the replacement rate.

Russians torture and mutilate their prisoners. If they get caught, they likely will not be returned with their gonads intact.

Is this a war crime? Yes. Is the rest of world letting it happen or actively abetting? It is!

The headline is misleading.

It's simply so now-widows can have another child (or two) with their late husband.

It's motivation for the soldiers -- even if you don't make it, you can still have another child after your death, and in that way you'll live on.

> genetic diversity?

Partially, yes. I know a scientist in one of Denver's clinics specializing in reproductive health.

They do not allow more than 25 descendants per man per country, and do not allow more than 100 globally. Yes, they do export the material to many countries, including developed ones, such as the UK.

The law about inheriting frozen material from a deceased partner is also widely outdated in many jurisdictions around the globe. In many countries even the legal wife cannot inherit it without active consent, which cannot be given posthumously for obvious reasons.

What a waste of life. Why hasn’t someone taken out Putin, is it really that hard? It can’t possibly be that hard for a state.

Ok sure, you go try it! Just remember that even if you succeed, the consequences may be everyone you know and love dying in nuclear fire.

Yes, it is difficult to take out the leader of a world nuclear world power.

Especially one as shrewd as Putin. Especially when you're expecting the EU to do it. Not sure why this is a surprise.

The world is not an action film.

This.

Never mind that they tried a month ago with the drone attacks.

How would this work exactly? The most protected person in the world, thousands of km from hostile borders, in the city with the world best AD surrounded, by bureaucrats who, if anything, think Putin is too soft on the West.

And what happened? They poked the bear and it turned their electricity grid off. Something NATO would have done in the first 4 hours, not take 4 years.

Right.

Ppl behave as if Russia isn't sitting on the world's conventional weapons cache, and largest weapons production capability.

Or that Ukraine wasn't sitting on the second largest cache of conventional weapons, particularly Soviet era AD.

That one attack where Russians released an ai generated video to prove its existence.

A state can do it, but it might fail, and the result of a failure would be a catastrophe so everyone is very cautious.

And then you get Medvedev. His finger is so itchy for the red button he has to rub it with vagisil.

At a certain point we have to understand that Putin is about the most pro-Western person left in Russia.

>Putin is about the most pro-Western person left in Russia.

Appearing more sane than Putin while simultaneously being in a position to plausibly serve as Putin's successor is likely to be fatal.

How's that relevant to the assertion that Putin should be whacked?

For whatever reason Putin is the most pro-West guy in the West, he remains the most pro-West guy in the West.

Off him and you get a very trigger happy replacement.

You think the war ends if they kill Putin? Medvedev would very likely nuke Kiev 30 minutes later.

I seriously doubt it. You have to be absolutely bonkers to start nuclear war over one person. Russia is insane but not suicidal.

Franz Ferdinand proves we are this bonkers.

I could believe that one man's death could start a conventional war. A conventional war is winnable. But 100 years later, a nuclear war is suicide at best.

Trump would almost certainly not intervene with nukes to protect non-US soil if Russia launched first, but there are plenty of European countries with nukes. Anyone in charge of Russia would have to accept the possibility that a first strike would leave them with a bad time.

They don't have to nuke anybody, just rain missiles on the Baltics and create a land bridge to Kaliningrad.

Now the escalation ball's on our court. Are you willing to die for Latvia?

(And Medvedev does appear to be that bonkers)

Russian are soldiers and the West are investors. (War investors in this case). From an investor standpoint a soldier is insane.

Putin is a symptom, not the problem.

The problem is that Russia is the one surviving major imperialist state (as in annexing land) of the four that existed in the 1930s. We defeated the other three and rebuilt their constitutions, but we didn't have the manpower or the will to do this to Russia as well.

And so, Russia continued in its imperialist tradition: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and next Moldova and Lithuania if they're not stopped.

The West naively believed that commerce would tame Russia, but an imperialist is never satisfied with riches and friends - only land gives them a true sense of status.

And so we must learn this painful lesson yet again.

Killing Putin would only make a temporary dent. The only way to stop this kind of beast is to destroy and rebuild like we did with Italy, Germany, and Japan.

Putin is literally creation of west, they wanted USSR to fall so desperately but didn't think about its consequences, now all the former soviet countries are killing each other and doing ethnic cleansing of different groups inside their border.

And how do you plan we do that?

We can't beat the Houthis, but Im sure we'll be great vs. the most battle tested army since world war 2.

Here's how Ukraine can still win

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