{"id":291357,"date":"2024-07-16T06:33:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T06:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=291357"},"modified":"2024-07-18T06:27:08","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T06:27:08","slug":"ex-nato-ambassador-tells-ukraine-to-conscript-teenagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=291357","title":{"rendered":"Ex-NATO ambassador tells Ukraine to conscript teenagers"},"content":{"rendered":"

RT.com \u2013 July 15, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Ukrainian conscripts. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Kiev should send 18-year-olds to fight Russia to increase the likelihood of victory, former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder has argued.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Ukraine lowered the draft threshold from 27 to 25 years as part of a major overhaul of the military service system, aimed at boosting mobilization<\/a> rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a war being fought by 40-year-olds,\u201d<\/em> Daalder told Euronews on the sidelines of last week\u2019s NATO summit in the US. \u201cNo other war in history has been fought by 40-year-olds.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to get 18-year-olds, and you need to get 20-year-olds, and you need to get 21-year-olds, which is what every army in the rest of the world relies on,\u201d<\/em> he added.<\/p>\n

Both Russia and Ukraine have a system of mandatory conscription of young adult males, but 18-years-olds are not deployed to the frontline\u00a0by either country. Moscow has said it fully relies on contracted volunteers rather than mobilized reservists in the conflict with its NATO-backed neighbor, with roughly<\/a> 1,000 people recruited per day, according to senior Russian officials<\/p>\n

Daalder served as the US ambassador under President Barack Obama. He currently heads the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, a prominent corporate-funded think tank\u00a0known for\u00a0a hawkish foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Kiev has reformed its military since suffering significant casualties during last year\u2019s failed attempt to push back Russian forces using Western-donated weapons. Draft avoidance emerged as a major problem, with many Ukrainian men risking their lives trying to cross the western border illegally.<\/p>\n

Weeks before Vladimir Zelensky signed into law the lowering of the draft age, US Senator Lindsey Graham urged<\/a> him to do so during a trip to Kiev. He said: \u201cI would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s at 27. You\u2019re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving \u2013 not at 25 or 27.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Ukrainian citizens to embrace the new rules, after they took effect in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour recent mobilization was a difficult decision, but a necessary one,\u201d<\/em> he said<\/a> in a speech at a prestigious Ukrainian university. Joining the military will \u201callow you to harden your defenses, to build more units, to take the fight to Russian aggressors.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Lozinsky said last month that a further reduction of the draft age was possible \u201cif we are still fighting for our existence.\u201d<\/em> His political party Golos is widely considered to be aligned with US interests in the country.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former US ambassador to NATO has urged Ukraine to conscript teenagers to makeup for manpower shortages in the military<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291360,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291357\/revisions\/291360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}