Financial Times -
https://www.ft.com/content/9fa3b0ac-e33d-4784-8222-6b745aba3004US president-elect Donald Trump intends to push Ukraine to lower its age of conscription in an effort to stabilise the country’s front lines ahead of direct negotiations with Russia. Speaking to US network ABC News on Sunday, Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security pick, gave the clearest picture yet of the new administration’s plan to end the war. Waltz said that its first steps would be to open dialogue with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin — to whom the US has not spoken directly since the war began — and to ask Kyiv to mobilise more men to stabilise Ukraine’s front lines ahead of negotiations.
“If Ukrainians have asked the whole world to be all in for democracy, we need them to be all in for democracy,” said Waltz. “And they certainly have fought bravely and they certainly have taken a very noble and tough stand. But we need to see those manpower shortages addressed.” He added: “This isn’t just about munitions, ammunition or writing more cheques. It’s about seeing the front lines stabilise so that we can enter into some type of deal.”
Waltz said preparations were under way for a Trump-Putin call, adding he expected it to take place over the coming weeks or days. Russian state television said on Sunday that Putin would have “important international contacts” this week, without specifying with whom. It is unclear how the Waltz comments will sit with the Zelenskyy government, as they put the onus on Ukraine to sacrifice more and with no promises of additional aid. Ukraine’s conscription age was lowered from 27 to 25 in April, but the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is 43. Lowering the age is politically unpopular and Ukraine has said it wants to protect its future generations. In recent months, Ukraine’s age for enlistment has been a source of tension between Washington and Kyiv. The outgoing administration of Joe Biden has publicly called on Kyiv to lower it further, while Ukraine has said it lacks enough weapons to arm the men they have already mobilised. US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in early December that the US would be prepared to train and arm more Ukrainian soldiers if Kyiv lowered the conscription age.
In response to Miller’s comments, Zelenskyy wrote on X that Ukraine “must not compensate the lack of equipment and training with the youth of soldiers”. In late December, when speaking to reporters in Brussels, Zelenskyy pointed again to the need for the west to send more weapons. “Please tell me, if a person is standing in front of you without a weapon, what difference does it make if that person is 20 years old or 30? There is no difference,” said Zelenskyy. In September, Zelenskyy told CNN that Ukraine had 10 mobilised brigades — roughly 30,000 men — that they were unable to equip and use for battle because of weapons shortages. Despite the US allocating tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine in April, the country has constantly complained that the arms are arriving in dribs and drabs.
In August, Ukraine’s finance ministry had to use money allocated for soldiers’ salaries to buy more weapons.
There's a reason Ukraine has refrained from drafting men aged 18-25 so far: those are the age cohorts which were decimated by the early 90s birth rate collapse. Just take a look at their population pyramid:
In general, Waltz and the Trump admin have the right idea: it is time to end this, so strengthen Ukraine's position, then go into negotiations and settle for the best deal you can get. I'm just sceptical that drafting in these tiny cohorts will do all that much to stabilize Ukraine's front lines. Their key predicament is still that they're getting destroyed from the air (glide bombs, ballistic missiles, drone swarms) and are outmatched in artillery vs artillery battles.