White House urges Ukraine to lower age of conscription from 25 to 18

The White House is urging Ukraine to quickly lower the age of conscription from 25 to 18 to boost the size of its military and stay in the fight with Russia . A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said today that the outgoing administration wants Ukraine to lower the conscription age to help expand its pool of fighting-age men as the war approaches its fourth year.

The official told reporters the Ukrainians believe they need about 160,000 additional troops, but the U.S. administration believes they probably will need more. Russia has lost some 200,000 soldiers to the conflict so far, the WSJ reported this month, while data from UAlosses suggests Ukraine has lost 60,435 since 2022 – some 0.5 per cent of the population. As many as 400,000 in Ukraine could be too injured to return to the battlefield, the Economist suggests . Data from such reports is difficult to verify and do not always include soldiers MIA or presumed dead.

Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s military committee, warned this week that Russia’s land forces are bigger now than at the time of the February 2022 invasion – but said ‘the quality of those forces has gone down’. The White House has already pushed more than $56bn in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion and expects to send billions more to Kyiv before Biden leaves office to help the war effort. The President has sought to funnel last-minute aid to Ukraine in the hope of giving Kyiv a fighting chance before Donald Trump takes office. Trump has not committed to continued aid and cut funding to NATO in his first term.

The Biden official said today ‘the pure math’ of Ukraine’s situation now is that it needs more troops in the fight to combat Russia’s replenishing army. ‘The need right now is manpower,’ he told reporters. ‘The Russians are in fact making progress, steady progress, in the east, and they are beginning to push back Ukrainian lines in Kursk… ‘Mobilization and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time as we look at the battlefield today.’

The official added that the administration believes that Ukraine can also optimise its current force by more aggressively dealing with soldiers who desert or go absent without leave. While more than 1 million Ukrainians are now in uniform, including National Guard and other units, Russia was able to boost the size of its army to 1.5 million active personnel in September , making it the second largest in the world, per Russia media. Russia has looked to bolster its forces with foreign conscripts in recent months, adding troops from North Korea and reportedly press-ganging Yemenis into fighting on the frontlines with the promise of high-paid employment away from the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been hearing concerns from allies in other western capitals that Ukraine has a troop level problem and not an arms problem, according to European officials. The European allies have also stressed that the lack of depth means that it may soon become untenable for Ukraine to continue to operate in Russia’s Kursk border region that Ukraine seized this year. Ukraine has taken steps to broaden the pool of draft-eligible men, but the efforts have only scratched the surface against a much larger Russian military.

In April, Ukraine’s parliament passed a series of laws, including lowering its draft-eligible age for men from 27 to 25, aimed at broadening the universe of men who could be called on to join the war. Those laws also did away with some draft exemptions and created an online registry for recruits. They were expected to add about 50,000 troops, far short of what Zelensky said at the time was needed. Conscription has been a sensitive matter in Ukraine throughout the war. Russia’s own problems with adequate troop levels and planning early in the war prevented Moscow from taking full advantage of its edge. But the tide has shifted and the US says the Ukrainian shortage can no longer be overlooked.

Some Ukrainians have expressed worry that further lowering the minimum conscription age and taking more young adults out of the workforce could backfire by further harming the war-ravaged economy. Ukraine has been helped by the recent US decision to allow the use of western weapons to be fired deep into Russian territory and hit military targets previously unreachable – as Biden looks to set Ukraine up to recover ground before leaving office. There has been debate over how helpful these will be on their own; Russia moved much of its equipment in anticipation of the decision. This may stretch Russia’s supply lines and slow its ability to rush munitions to the front.

And the US administration has also, controversially, entered talks about sending Ukraine anti-personnel landmines to help defend its territory and stagger the Russian advance. But Ukraine today does indeed find itself on the backfoot, with Russia regaining momentum in its own Kursk province, following’s Kyiv’s stunning incursion in August. The situation in Kursk has become further complicated by the arrival of thousands of North Korean troops who have come to help Moscow try to claw back the land. Recent estimates vary from 10,000 to 12,000 troops.

Tensions have ratcheted up in the wake of Russia’s use of what appeared to be an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile on Dnipro on November 21. The missile – dubbed the Oreshnik – carries multiple warheads, is believed to be nuclear-capable, and travels at a speed and trajectory that makes it difficult to intercept. Putin said that Russia would keep testing its new hypersonic Oreshnik missile ‘including in combat conditions’ depending on the ‘situation and the nature of the security threats that are created for Russia’ in televised comments.

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