President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), said Sunday that the Trump administration will ask Ukraine to lower the age of conscription so more troops can be sent to the frontlines.
Under Ukraine’s current mobilization laws, the minimum age for conscription is 25. The Biden administration has been calling for Ukraine to lower it to 18, and Waltz made clear the next administration will do the same thing.
“The other thing we are going to need to see is really stabilizing things on the battlefield. And one of the things we’ll be asking of the Ukrainians is, they have real manpower issues,” Waltz said in an interview with ABC News.
“Their draft age right now is 26 years old [25], not 18. I don’t think a lot of people realize that they could generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers,” Waltz said. “So, when we hear about morale problems when we hear about issues on the front line. Look, if the Ukrainians have asked the entire world to be all in for democracy, we need them to be all in for democracy.”
Waltz framed the call to conscript younger Ukrainians and the need to “stabilize” the front as necessary to end the war. He said Trump will be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin soon, possibly in the coming days and weeks, and will be working to form “relationships” needed to end the conflict.
“From President Trump’s perspective, you can’t enter a deal if you don’t have some type of relationship and dialog with the other side. And we will absolutely establish that in the coming months,” he said.
On the campaign trail and in press conferences since the election, Trump has lamented the fact that so many Ukrainians and Russians are being killed in the war. Waltz acknowledged that the frontlines are a “meat grinder,” yet his comments suggest the Trump administration will continue supporting the conflict in an effort to gain leverage for a deal with Russia.
Waltz also said in the interview that a ceasefire would be a “positive first step” and said he hoped it would happen soon. “That would then allow us to enter into the framework of some type of negotiated solution here,” he said.
