Trump's incoming adviser urges Ukraine to go "all in" and lower draft age
Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s incoming National Security Adviser, believes that Ukraine should lower the draft age in order to bring in hundreds of thousands of new troops and stabilise the front line.
Source: Waltz in an interview with ABC News
Quote: "The other thing we’re going to need to see is really stabilising things on the battlefield, and one of the things we’ll be asking of the Ukrainians is, they have real manpower issues.
Their draft age right now is 26 years old [it is actually 25 – ed.], not 18. I don’t think a lot of people realise that they could generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.
So when we hear about morale problems, when we hear about issues on the front line, look, if the Ukrainians have asked the entire world to be all in for democracy, we need them to be all in for democracy."
Details: According to Waltz, lowering the draft age is necessary to stabilise the front line so that some sort of deal can be reached.
Background:
- On 19 November, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Ukraine had received a significant supply of various weapons from the US but continued to face challenges on the battlefield, and he attributed these difficulties to mobilisation issues.
- The media subsequently reported that the Biden administration was urging Ukraine to rapidly increase the size of its armed forces, including by revising its mobilisation legislation so that people can be drafted into the army from the age of 18.
- US billionaire Elon Musk, an adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, criticised US calls for Ukraine to allow mobilisation from the age of 18.
- According to media reports, the disputes over the number of troops mobilised and the age of mobilisation have led to tensions between the Ukrainian and US presidents.
- On 19 December, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, commenting on discussions about a potential lowering of the mobilisation age, said that it was more urgent to provide the army with weapons and training from the West.
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