US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a member of the outgoing Joe Biden administration, suggested that Ukraine should lower its conscription age to 18 from the current 25 in an interview with Reuters this week.
‘These are very hard decisions, and I fully both understand that and respect that,’ Secretary Blinken added.
President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly stated his intention to end the Russo-Ukrainian war in a negotiated peace. He even suggested that he could achieve that even before he takes office on 20 January. That, however, is unlikely now, mainly due to the recent escalation by the Biden administration. They allowed the Ukrainian armed forces the use of American-made missiles to strike Russian targets. In response, the Kremlin changed its nuclear policy so that it now treats an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, as a joint assault that may trigger a nuclear first strike.
Secretary Blinken’s comments about lowering the conscription age also signal that the US is still pushing for a solution on the battlefield.
The draft is already unpopular with the Ukrainian public, especially among the ethnic Hungarian minority in the West of the country. Thousands of men have illegally fled Ukraine to avoid conscription since the outbreak of the war. Some of them have turned to human smugglers online to rescue them for a hefty fee; while others have endangered their lives by trying to swim across the border to Hungary in the Tisza River.
The Zelensky administration has been reluctant to lower the constitution age as well, in fear of its demographic effects after the war. Losing too many young men is likely to have an adverse effect on the country’s already low fertility rate, 1.26 births per woman, which is below Russia’s (1.42).
However, still according to Reuters, Blinken is not alone in his opinion. The London-based news agency writes that it ‘reflects a growing view among Western officials;’ and quotes new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in agreement with the lowering of the mobilization age on the record, although without mentioning a specific age group.
This is not the first time Secretary Blinken has raised some eyebrows with a comment about the Ukraine war since the election.
Shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election, he said that ‘President Biden is committed that every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed out the door between now and 20 January’. House Speaker Mike Johnson from the Republican Party, however, has just rejected President Biden’s request to issue an additional $24 billion in aid to Ukraine.
It seems that the pro-war forces in Brussels and Washington are still going at full throttle before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. He, along with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary, has been at the forefront of pushing for a peace deal in Eastern Europe.
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