Ukraine urged to lower conscription age to 18 in bid to quickly boost size of military
28 November 2024, 00:15
The US has urged Ukraine to lower its conscription age to 18 in a bid to boost the size of its military.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Ukraine should lower the mobilisation age to 18 from the current age of 25 to help expand the pool of fighting-age men available to help, a Biden administration official said.
The "pure maths" of Ukraine's situation now is that it needs more troops in the fight, they said.
The White House has pushed more than $56billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the conflict began - with it expected to send billions more to Kyiv before Mr Biden leaves office.
But with time running out, Ukraine has been told that it has the weaponry it needs and now must dramatically increase its manpower if it is going to stay in the fight.
More than one million Ukrainians are now in uniform, including national guard and other units.
The Ukrainians believe they need around 160,000 additional troops, but the current US administration believes they will need more than that.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has heard similar concerns over troops from other allies in the West.
Ukraine has taken steps to broaden the pool of draft-eligible men, but the efforts have only scratched the surface against a much larger Russian military.
European allies have also stressed that the lack of depth means that it may soon become untenable for Ukraine to continue to operate in Russia's Kursk border region that Ukraine seized this year.
The situation in Kursk has become further complicated by the arrival of thousands of North Korean troops who were brought in to help Moscow take back the land.
