The West must provide more missiles instead of telling Kiev to mobilize more troops, the Ukrainian leader has said
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected the idea of lowering the military mobilization age in his country, dismissing calls from the West to do so.
Earlier this year, Ukraine lowered the mandatory conscription age from 27 to 25. Some former Western officials haveurged Kiev to drop it further to 18, and the administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden has reportedly pushed for this behind closed doors.
“The priority should be providing missiles and lowering Russia’s military potential, not Ukraine’s draft age,” Zelensky said, commenting on the idea in a post on X on Tuesday morning.
“We must focus on equipping existing brigades and training personnel to use this equipment. We must not compensate the lack of equipment and training with the youth of soldiers,” he wrote.
The issue was raised on Monday during a regular briefing at the US State Department, with spokesman Matthew Miller stating that the decision was Kiev’s to make. “What we have made clear is that if they produce additional forces to join the fight, we and our allies will be ready to equip those forces and train those forces to enter battle,” he added.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously suggested that Kiev has some “hard decisions” to make in terms of mobilization.
“Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary,” the top US diplomat said in an interview last week.
The lowering of the draft age was part of a major overhaul of the Ukrainian military service system, which Kiev hoped would bolster conscription rates to replace battlefield losses sustained in the fight with Russia. However, many Ukrainian men prefer to hide from draft officers or even flee the country illegally, taking a precious and sometimes fatal trip across the border.
Over the weekend, Zelensky met with US President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to wrap up the hostilities after he is inaugurated in January. Following the meeting in Paris, the Ukrainian leader said he would talk to Biden about his request for an invitation to NATO, because “it makes no sense discussing with Trump” something that he does not yet have an influence on.
Ukraine’s bid to join the US-led military bloc and the West’s promise to eventually grant it are among the primary causes of the conflict, according to Moscow. The West intends to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian,” Russian officials have said.
