Senior official says Ukrainian army is not mobilising or training enough new soldiers to replace those lost on the battlefield
27 November 2024 11:14pm GMT
Ukraine should consider lowering the age of military service for its soldiers from 25 to 18, a senior US administration official said.
Ukraine was not mobilising or training enough new soldiers to replace those lost on the battlefield, the official who spoke anonymously said.
“The need right now is manpower,” he 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.”
Russian forces are making gains in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers said this week.
In April, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, signed into law legislation to lower the mobilisation age for combat duty from 27 to 25, expanding the number of civilians the army could mobilise to fight under martial law, which has been in place since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Joe Biden’s administration has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine, but that backing may diminish when Donald Trump comes to power in January. Mr Trump has tapped Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who presented him with a plan to end the war in Ukraine, to serve as a special envoy for the conflict.
A source in Mr Zelensky’s office said the country did not have what it needed to equip the troops it was mobilising now.
“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. “We cannot 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 officials recognise getting younger troops is politically fraught for Mr Zelensky’s government and Ukraine has discussed the option of offering incentives for younger people to sign up in a non-mandatory recruitment drive, another official said.
Behind closed doors, Germany also has been calling on Ukraine to lower its conscription age, according to a German defence ministry source.
While Mr Biden is still in office, the United States will continue to provide Kyiv with hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets of various ranges, hundreds of vehicles and weapons systems to support combat operations as well as air defence interceptors, the first US senior administration official said.
“Ammunition and vehicle shortages are not the most critical issue facing Ukraine. They now have healthy stockpiles of the vital tools, munitions and weapons that they need to succeed on the battlefield,” he said.
“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.”
Selected DT readers’ comments. Starting with an excellent one from :
Give Ukraine Nukes
Yeah; better that Ukraine destroys its teenagers than we in the west, dig into our own pockets, so to provide Ukraine more weapons? (Weapons that were usually either near, or mildly beyond their expiry date).
After all (somehow) such lumps of metal, are worth more, than Ukrainian lives?
I hope: Trump will end this war with a deal.
Ukraine won’t accept anything less (especially given The Holodomor + Soviet ways in which Russia is currently treating, those it occupies).
Martin Wiley
Shows the nonsense of pretending numbers don’t matter and that a few expensive hi tech weapons would compensate
Ukraine never had the manpower in the first place so Zelensky strategy never had much chance on a battlefield with a 600 mile front ..
If Ukraine was able to actually draft an extra 150,000 then Russia would do the same and more.
K Brown
Reply to Martin Wiley
The Russians are using Houthis and North Koreans now so they must be short of cannon fodder.
Trevor Smallwood
Reply to Martin Wiley
Who is pretending numbers don’t matter? Of course they do but numbers alone don’t guarantee victory or defeat.
The last nearly 3 years demonstrate that over and over.
Trevor Smallwood
Looks like the Russian economy is really going tits up. Out of cash and can’t borrow. All Vlad has is the jam jars belonging to his oligarchs. I expect they’ll decide to keep the jars and dispense with Vlad.
Dave Edwards
If Ukraine and Russia are really headed for a negotiated peace – expecting the incoming Trump Administration to make both of them “an offer they can’t refuse” to come to the table – then what good would conscripting all these much younger men at this stage? Now, if the current U.S. Administration wants the war to drag on and on, then sure there is time to conscript and train these men – but what good will that do?
Matt Forster
No NATO country would be expected to sacrifice its young men in WW1-style trenches and infantry waves. So why should Ukraine? A NATO war would be based on air superiority with suppression/destruction of enemy air defences and massive use of long-range missiles. Ukraine needs more and better fighter jets (the F-16s are not good enough, Gripen would be a better choice), more air defence systems and more missiles, especially cruise missiles. Ukraine can absolutely defeat Russia if they have the right kit in large enough quantities.
Anonymous source = kremcrapper.
Ukraine’s losses are absolutely terrible, but far lower than those sustained by Britain in WWI at a time when Britain had a population comparable with that of Ukraine today. Britain kept going.
Britain’s fatalities sustained over 4 years in WWI amounted to 850,000. Ukraine’s troop fatalities in almost 3 years are thought to be about 100,000.
The difference is that in WW1 and WW2, Britain had allies that were preparing to join the fight to help out. They took their time, but eventually did the right thing.
Ukraine’s wretched allies today refuse to send troops or even provide air power. To cap it all, they consistently provide Ukraine with only 20% of the materiel that it needs to defeat the putinaZi horde.
Plus there were less of the opposition then for us to fight against, as Germany was and is a much smaller Country than moskovia.
WW1 was fought along the same lines as all previous wars, by throwing men into battle, which explains the casualty figures.
WW2 being more mechanised, saw a lot less casualties, also of course due to advances in care and rehabilitation.
Currently the moskali are fighting somewhere between WW1 and WW2, whereas Ukraine are capable of any modern war if given the equipment.
The real reasons why Ukraine is being hampered must be very interesting, I wonder if they will ever be revealed.
DON’T DO IT!!!
I swear, this pathetic administration has never had a single good idea. It trickle-fed Ukraine with mostly outdated weapons all along, often preceded by months of refusal, and now it thinks that Ukraine can turn the tide by sending thousands of young, under equipped men into their deaths. The Biden administration seems to be testing how low it can sink before it finally slithers out of the White House like the worms they are.