Ukraine urged to lower conscription age to 18; US to send Kyiv more weapons

Kyiv is not mobilising or training enough new soldiers, a senior US official says, as Russia makes major advances in Ukraine.

Ukraine should consider lowering the age of military service to 18, a US official has said, as the outgoing White House administration is reported to be preparing a new weapons package to bolster Kyiv before President Joe Biden leaves office in January.

Speaking to reporters, an unnamed senior US official said on Wednesday that Ukraine should consider lowering the age of military service from 25 to 18 years, as the country was not mobilising or training enough new soldiers to replace those killed in action.

“The need right now is manpower,” the senior Biden administration official said.

“The Russians are in fact making progress, steady progress, in the east, and they are beginning to push back Ukrainian lines in Kursk … Mobilisation and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time, as we look at the battlefield today.”

The official also said Ukrainian forces now have “healthy stockpiles of the vital tools, munitions and weapons that they need to succeed on the battlefield”.

“[But] without a pipeline of new troops, the existing units, who are fighting heroically on the front lines, cannot rotate out to rest, refit, train and re-equip,” he said.

However, a source in the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Reuters news agency Ukraine does not have the resources to equip current troops.

“Right now, with our current mobilisation efforts, we don’t have enough equipment, for example, armoured vehicles, to support all the troops we are calling up,” the source said.

Kyiv, he added, would not “compensate for our partners’ delays in decision-making and supply chains with the lives of our soldiers and of the youngest of our guys”.

US President-elect Donald Trump, right, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet at Trump Tower in New York on September 27, 2024 [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]

In April, Zelenskyy already used martial law to lower the military mobilisation age for combat duty from 27 to 25, which had been in place since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The call by some in the US for increased recruitment in Ukraine comes as President Biden is reportedly preparing a $725m weapons package for Ukraine in advance of the handover to President-elect Donald Trump in January.

Reuters, citing an official familiar with the plan, said the Biden administration plans to push through a weapons package containing a variety of weapons – including antitank mines, drones, Stinger missiles, cluster munitions and ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

Formal notification to Congress of the weapons package could come as soon as Monday, according to the US official, though the exact contents and size of the package could change.

Uncertainty abounds as to the effect a Trump presidency may have on Ukraine’s war effort as he previously criticised the scale of Western aid to Kyiv and hinted in June that he would cut military aid if he was elected.

On Wednesday, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, told the UN Security Council that any decision by the Trump administration to cut support would be a “death sentence” for the Ukrainian army.

Analysts and war bloggers have said Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the invasion, capturing an area half the size of London over the past month.

Quickly winding down the Ukraine war was one of Trump’s central election campaign promises, but he has failed to provide hard details on how he plans to achieve this.

Trump named Keith Kellogg on Wednesday as his new special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The retired lieutenant general has presented Trump with a plan to end the war which involves freezing battle lines at their current locations and forcing Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table.

Zelenskyy has warned that any ceasefire discussions without security guarantees from Western partners will only benefit Moscow.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies