MOSCOW, December 16. /TASS/. The situation on the battlefield will not change even if Ukraine lowers the country’s call-up age to 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
"I think that lowering the mobilization age to 18 would already be a crime. Reducing it to 14, as was done in Nazi Germany with the creation of the Hitler Youth, would be an atrocity. Everybody understands this," he said after a Russian defense ministry board meeting.
He said that he has no doubt that the draft age in Ukraine will ultimately be lowered. "And they will send young boys for slaughter. Just as they are now doing when they catch men in the streets, like stray dogs, to send them to the battlefield to face the bullets via involuntary mobilization, they will do the same with these young boys," he noted.
And "this regime’s officials" will simply flee the country to be sheltered by those at whose beck and call they are now, the Russian leader went on to say. "That’s all, it will be like this. Some figures of the recent past have already fled, are already abroad, in comfort, because of all the money they stole from the Ukrainian people," he said, adding that they are willing to do just about anything for their masters.
"I believe it will go on like this until we achieve the goals of the special military operation," Putin noted.