Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s refusal to lower the country's age of mandatory conscription is part of his bargaining strategy with the US and its allies, senior Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik has claimed.
The White House is reportedly pressuring Kiev to reduce the draft age from 25 to 18, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week that Ukraine needs to make “hard decisions” on mobilization. Zelensky, however, suggested on Tuesday that the West’s priority should be “providing missiles and lowering Russia’s military potential, not Ukraine’s draft age.”
Ultimately, Zelensky is willing to trade more Ukrainian lives for Western perks, and his public signals are merely part of the haggling process, Miroshnik said, as quoted by the Izvestia newspaper on Wednesday. The official leads a mission in the Russian Foreign Ministry tasked with investigating alleged Ukrainian war crimes.
“You give us long-range missiles or something, and we’ll lower the age of mobilization in a gesture of gratitude,” Miroshnik stated, explaining how he sees Kiev’s position. For those currently in charge in Ukraine, people are a resource to be traded off, he claimed in the interview.
“For as long as he has been at the helm, [Zelensky] has demonstrated that he is willing to pay with Ukraine and its people to stay in power,” the diplomat added.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian MP Viktoria Vagner warned that the country’s demographic situation has gone from bad to its worst ever in modern history.
Recent government statistics show that the death rate in Ukraine is currently three times as high as the birth rate, Vagner wrote in the New Voice outlet on Monday. The country has struggled with insufficient fertility levels since the early years of its independence, she added.
Miroshnik said Kiev’s policies are largely to blame for the current perilous state, adding that contrary to its rhetoric, the West “does not give a damn” and is willing to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”
“They have paid for the ability to use these people as they see fit, and are acting accordingly,” he asserted. “The Ukrainian people are tallied as ‘expendables’ rather than ‘assets’ in the West.”