UNITED NATIONS, January 17. /TASS/. The Kiev authorities will not be able to draft enough soldiers ready to die even if they reduce Ukraine’s conscription age from 25 to 18 years, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said.
"The Kiev regime will disgracefully collapse, sharing the fate of the pro-US regime in Afghanistan, which collapsed in 2021," he pointed out at a United Nations Security Council meeting on Ukraine.
According to Nebenzya, unwilling to see that forcible mobilization has sparked outrage among the Ukrainian people who don’t want to be thrown into the meat grinder of war, Western countries "insist that the expired Ukrainian showman reduce the country’s conscription age from 25 to 18 years." "Meanwhile, they ignore the expert opinion that many men in that age category have already left Ukraine and the move will not make it possible to draft enough soldiers ready to die at the front," the Russian envoy stressed.
Nebenzya went on to say that "the Ukrainians are showing increasing unwillingness to fight for Zelensky’s corrupted clique and the West’s geopolitical interests." "According to the command of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, over half a million people are currently wanted for draft evasion," he noted.
A possible draft age reduction is being increasingly discussed in Ukraine as this is what the West demands. Currently, Ukraine is mobilizing men between the ages of 25 and 60. The draft age was previously lowered from 27 to 25 in April 2024. Despite this adjustment, the Ukrainian armed forces continue to face significant troop shortages.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that reducing Ukraine’s draft age to 18 years would be a crime. He stressed, however, that even such a measure would not help Kiev change the situation on the battlefield.