US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said Ukraine needs to begin conscripting men as young as 18 to succeed on the battlefield against Russia. The current minimum age set by Kiev for draftees is 25.
Washington and its allies have long been pushing Ukraine to lower its mobilization age to replace its losses of personnel on the battlefield.
Blinken made the remarks on Wednesday in an interview with Reuters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, after attending a two-day meeting of the military bloc’s foreign ministers.
The top US diplomat said that Kiev has “hard decisions” to make about further mobilization.
“Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary,” Blinken stated. “Right now, 18- to 25-year-olds are not in the fight,” he said, noting it is up to Kiev to decide how best to get them into frontline operations.
He reiterated the call at a press meeting on Wednesday, claiming that manpower is critical, “because even with the money, even with the munitions, there have to be people on the front lines.”
The secretary of state also said that NATO is committed to making sure that every soldier that Ukraine mobilizes has “the training and the equipment they need to effectively defend the country.”
NATO chief Mark Rutte echoed Blinken’s view, telling reporters on Wednesday “we need probably more people to move to the front line.” He did not mention a particular age group, though.
In an interview with local media last week, a Ukrainian officer responsible for enforcing mobilization admitted that any major public event in Ukraine could be raided by conscription officials looking for potential recruits.
The West’s calls for Kiev to lower its conscription age come as the country’s military faces high desertion rates and a shortage of fighting-age men at the front.
The Financial Times reported on Saturday that the Ukrainian military is plagued with high desertion rates, with at least 60,000 of its soldiers having gone AWOL.
Last week, Dmitry Litvin, an aide to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, said that the US call to replenish the country’s fighting forces with young men “does not make sense” and that Washington should instead focus on sending the firepower it has promised Kiev as quickly as possible.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long argued that Kiev’s Western backers are willing to use Ukrainian men as “cannon fodder” in what Moscow regards as a US proxy war against Russia and will urge the country to fight “to the last Ukrainian.”