US officials are pressuring Kiev to lower the mobilization age, Ukrainian MP Roman Kostenko, who also serves as secretary of Kiev’s national security council, has claimed. The lawmaker said he agreed with the calls, and urged a reduction in the draft age from 25 to as young as 18.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky lowered the military eligibility threshold from 27 to 25 years of age in early 2024, following sustained heavy losses in the conflict with Russia.
In an interview with Lviv-based NTA TV on Friday, Kostenko claimed that members of the US Congress had contacted him to say, “Look, we are giving you weapons, and you say you don’t have men. How come you don’t draft people under 25?” The MP said he could cite Ukrainian law in response, but does not understand the rationale behind it.
“People have their arguments, say we’ll have a lost generation... I say, ‘Look, if they don’t want to go now and defend our nation, they are already a lost generation,’” Kostenko added.
“A person can run for parliament in our country and make decisions about complex policies at 21, and can only go to war at 25. Something is wrong here. I don’t know who invented that,” he said.
The 40-year-old MP is a military veteran and also has the rank of a colonel in Kiev’s security agency, the SBU.
Ukrainian military commanders have complained to Western journalists that the quality of reinforcements has dropped significantly since the conscription reforms. New recruits are poorly motivated, prone to desertion, and cannot be given battlefield tasks because they are barely trained, commanders have said.
There is ample evidence of conscription officers using force to snatch resisting Ukrainians in the street for mobilization. Some fighting-age men would rather risk their lives trying to flee the country illegally than stay and face the draft.
Kostenko lamented that the flow of volunteers to join the military has dried up since 2022, and that the country now receives “neither quantity nor quality” of new troops. “Somebody does not work hard enough,” he claimed, arguing it is the responsibility of Ukraine’s commander-in-chief and senior government officials to inspire the population.
Moscow has accused the US of waging a proxy war against Russia, which Washington will continue to fight “to the last Ukrainian” with the complicity of the government in Kiev.