“Washington is pressuring Ukraine to change the law and enable the mobilization of the youngest adult men,” reported the AP agency and the British daily Financial Times. A representative of Joe Biden's administration assessed that this was necessary to respond to staff shortages in the Ukrainian army.
A senior administration official said Wednesday that Washington wants to, AP reported Ukraine lowered the age of mobilization from the current 25 to 18. The official argued that this resulted from “pure mathematics” regarding the current situation and personnel problems of the Ukrainian armed forces.
On Wednesday, the secretary of state USA Antony Blinken announced that the goal of the current administration in the last weeks of its term of office is to equip Ukraine with equipment that will enable it to fight throughout the next year.
However, the official quoted by AP believes that – with arms supplies assured – Kiev must also provide itself with a sufficient number of soldiers. He also assessed that Ukraine needs to increase the number of soldiers in its army by more than the 160,000 soldiers that Ukrainians are talking about.
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The issue of mobilization is controversial in Ukraine
According to AP, representatives of Ukraine's other partners made similar comments to the authorities in Kiev, claiming that the country's problem currently concerns the number of troops, not the availability of weapons.
They were also to express the view that – taking into account the extension of the front to the Kursk region – a Ukrainian bridgehead in the territory Russia may not be sustainable.
The issue of mobilization has long caused controversy in Ukraine, and the president Volodymyr Zelensky postponed the entry into force of the currently applicable mobilization law.
Official: Ukraine is not mobilizing enough troops
As AP recalled, the concerns of the authorities in Kiev concerned the impact of the decision to increase the collection on the Ukrainian economy. According to the US authorities, the answer to these challenges could be a more decisive approach by the Ukrainian side towards deserters.
Although Russia has suffered heavy losses during offensive operations in recent months and also has problems with the availability of troops, the balance of forces still favors Moscow. Thanks to this, the Russian army is able to make gradual progress on the front.
“The simple truth is that Ukraine is not currently mobilizing or training enough troops to replace battlefield losses and at the same time keep pace with Russia's increasingly large army,” concluded the American official, quoted by the FT.
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