Kiev's backers demanded Ukraine conscript 18-year-olds
Some of Kiev's Western backers demanded that Ukraine lower the age of military conscription to 18 in return for their support for stricter sanctions on Russia, Vladimir Zelensky has claimed.
Manpower shortages in Ukraine's army have triggered a wave of forced conscription raids across the country which the public is increasingly opposing.
In an interview with Hungarian daily Valasz Online on Tuesday, Zelensky acknowledged that mobilization remains a major issue.
'Mobilization is a problem in every war. Ukraine is no exception… People are tired,' he said, estimating that Kiev can mobilize 27,000 people a month.
Despite his Western backers seeking it, Zelensky has opposed mandatory conscription of 18-year-olds.
'It is not the number of people that matters, but weapons and technology,' he said, adding that the same is true for the scale of Western sanctions against Russia.
'At the same time, Western partners list the reasons why they did not decide on sanctions, saying Ukraine has not mobilized from the age of 18,' Zelensky stated.
Kiev attempted to placate the Western countries demanding conscription of 18-year olds. 'We provided an opportunity for 18-24 year-olds to show that they too can serve if our partners want them to,' he said. 'Thousands are fighting on the front lines without proper weapons,' he said.
Ukraine announced general mobilization in February 2022, barring most men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. In 2024, faced with mounting losses, the country lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25 and tightened mobilization rules. The forced draft campaign has resulted in numerous violent clashes between recruitment officers and potential conscripts.
Kiev launched a new voluntary military recruitment campaign earlier this year, targeting men aged 18 to 24. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called the program 'a one-way ticket,' suggesting that Ukraine is 'annihilating' its youth.
Russian officials have long said that the West is ready to fight Moscow 'until the last Ukrainian.'
Media reports have claimed that former-US President Joe Biden's staff attempted to pressure Kiev to reduce the draft age from 25 to 18. Former-Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned at the time that Ukraine would have to make 'hard decisions' on mobilization.
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'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.' — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar At his Resolute Desk, Trump sits like a force of nature — waging war, bending markets, and crushing dissent with a single gesture. He doesn't follow rules; he rewrites them. The world's on edge, all eyes on him. He doesn't blink. He dominates. One man. One will. Total disruption. But step past the drama, and a different picture emerges: beneath the surface, fault lines are running deep, primed to rupture. The final reckoning? Trump's presidency is headed for failure. These are the Fateful Five: the interconnected weaknesses that spell his likely downfall — a web of vulnerability captured in the Five F-Framework (see Figure 1). US President Donald John Trump has often shown the right political instincts – seeking to end conflicts, challenging entrenched ideologies, and pushing back on progressive social agendas. 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Unlike epochal leaders who built enduring institutional frameworks – think Napoleon's Code Civile – Trump's legacy so far boils down to a bold dismantling act, epitomized by Elon Musk's chainsaw ripping through the excess of labyrinthine bureaucracy. Tellingly, Trump seems to have skipped classes in Organizational Behavior – the study of workplace dynamics – to his detriment. Had he mastered it, he could have driven systemic change step-by-step – in a methodic and disciplined manner: sparking urgency, forging vision, and empowering execution. The US president would also have learned to meticulously calibrate transformation across key dimensions: purpose, substance, scope, scale, speed, style, and sequence. To illustrate: savvy change leaders are timing every single move with precision – fast for quick wins, slow for broad and lasting buy-in – and balance structural reforms with cultural shifts. In his haste and vaulting ambition, Trump mistook force for foresight – jamming every lever to the limit with no flight plan, no runway, and no brakes. He drove radical change at full throttle on all fronts, ignoring the gauges and redlining the engine – as if raw adrenaline alone could fly the plane. On his blind mission to the stars, POTUS 47 neglected the intricate immune system of a bureaucracy with its manifold ingenious ways of mounting resistance – from open defiance to slow-rolling to feigned compliance that quietly sabotages reform behind a smile. Need a masterclass in bureaucratic resistance? Just watch Yes, Prime Minister. Notably, Trump seemed oblivious to the ratchet effect – a dynamic in which actions, like a one-way mechanism, are far easier to take than to undo. It is a cautionary principle: once momentum takes hold – whether in administrative systems or government policies – reversal is rarely simple. 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With his seat-of-the-pants style and raw energy, he shatters long-standing barriers, but creates little lasting substance. Paradoxically, despite his pragmatism, Trump often operates in a vacuum – driven by wishful thinking and blind to the hard and dynamic realities of power: scarce economic resources, military constraints, geographic limitations, and institutional checks. Committing the fallacy of the last move, he gravely underestimates backlash from adversaries, such as tariff retaliation or military counterstrikes. Remember the time-tested truth: 'Every battle plan is perfect until first contact with the enemy.' Trump's shaky grasp of realpolitik – pragmatic power politics grounded in shifting realities – leaves him ill-equipped for complex global challenges. His radical shifts in strategy, tone, and messaging betray a deafness to the nuance that serious statecraft demands. Trump's erratic style is laid bare in his wild policy swings and theatrical dealings with friends and foes alike. Undermining the very structures that long projected America's power and cemented its political, economic, and military might, Trump voluntarily surrendered key levers of dominance that his adversaries could have only dreamt of prying loose. He rattled NATO by questioning core defense commitments, stunned allies with abrupt troop pullouts from Germany, Syria, and Afghanistan, and treated US forces in Asia as bargaining chips – demanding steep payments from South Korea and Japan. Wounding a friend marks a stunning break even from the most basic pagan maxim – 'help your friends, harm your enemies' – a code long fundamentally transcended by Christian ethics. Trump's North Korea approach veered from threats of 'fire and fury' and mocking Kim Jong-un as 'Little Rocket Man,' to praising him as a 'very talented' leader and crossing into North Korea with a smile and handshake. The dime-spinning showmanship grabbed headlines – but yielded nothing: North Korea kept its nukes. Forged in the high-stakes world of real estate, Trump brings a gambler's instinct to politics – gutsy, fearless, and drawn to spectacular all-in bets that others would avoid. But he often chases outsized rewards while ignoring long-term risks. Trump's 2018 unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal alienated allies and fueled tensions – bringing Iran closer to the bomb. His sweeping trade war with China that year backfired, straining global supply chains and hurting American farmers without a clear victory. The 2025 US attack on Iran escalated diplomatic failure into open conflict. Trump's move to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem epitomizes short-term brinkmanship over long-term strategy and consensus-building. Breaking decades of precedent, it fired up his evangelical and pro-Israel base but sparked regional tensions and sidelined the US as a broker in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. At times, Trump shows caution, backpedaling after hallmark, bet-the-house gambits – canceling tariffs or recasting himself as an impartial arbiter and kind-hearted peacemaker after ruthlessly igniting conflicts and backing one side – earning the moniker 'daddy' during a respite in the 2025 Israel-Iran war. Yet a moment may come when the destructive forces and chaos he unleashed spirals beyond control, and the former host of The Apprentice finds himself outmatched – not as the boss, but as the Sorcerer's Apprentice, forced to cry: 'Master! Help! The evil spirits I have summoned will not be quiet!' – only to hear in reply: 'You're fired!' 'It's the economy, stupid' – coined in Clinton's 1992 campaign to spotlight the voters' top concern – remains timeless. Yet Trump seems deaf to this enduring truth. From the start, Trump shattered economic orthodoxy with his Make America Great mantra, favoring shock interventions from the White House over steady multilateral cooperation and gradual consensus-building at home and abroad. Yet mirroring his shaky grasp of realpolitik, he was weak in realwirtschaft – often gambling on wishful outcomes, underestimating the hard forces shaping the real economy. Over time, Trump doubled down on destructive economic nationalism and selective deregulation – pursuing radical decoupling from China and showering incentives on US manufacturing. He ramped up tariffs on European and Asian imports, reigniting global trade wars and driving up inflation at home. Undermining global climate efforts, he unleashed fossil fuel expansion by gutting environmental rules and opening federal lands to drilling. In 2025, he signed the beautifully alliterate One Big Beautiful Bill – a sweeping deficit-financed economic package bundling infrastructure spending, tax cuts, and industrial subsidies – hailed as bold stimulus by supporters, slammed by critics as reckless populism. In his most audacious economic gambit yet, Trump vowed to scrap income taxes for most Americans and replace the IRS with an 'External Revenue Service' bankrolled by sweeping import tariffs. Trump's plan grabs headlines but reeks of recklessness – overhyping tariffs, burdening consumers, fueling inflation, inviting global backlash, and eroding fiscal credibility; a crowd-pleaser doomed by economic realities and glaring policy contradictions – like aiming to tame inflation by stoking it with tariffs. This reveals the deeper flaw of the overreaching leader: by putting politics above economics and sidestepping fundamental economic principles, he triggers toxic fallout that can swiftly unravel their reign. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's defiance of economic orthodoxy – slashing interest rates amid soaring inflation – ignited a lira freefall and an inflation inferno, proving that fighting fire with gasoline burns fast and deep. Flouting economic fundamentals in a policy blitz can precipitate a swift downfall – U.K. prime minister Liz Truss's radical push for large unfunded tax cuts shattered market trust in the economic competency and policies of her government and sent her premiership crashing in just 44 days. At the end, we may ask, 'Was this the rise of a colossus – or the long prologue to a fall?' Trump embodies the quintessential American can-do spirit – the very driving force that vaulted the land of opportunity to global preeminence, drawing the best and brightest for generations. Yet unchecked strength in excess – untempered by moderation, prudence, or equity – becomes weakness that, if uncorrected and compounded by other flaws, engenders derailment. Trump's impulsiveness and unpredictability, personalized rule, disregard for diplomatic balance, and penchant for undercutting institutions evoke not Bismarck's cautious statecraft, but the apparent reckless self-sabotage of Wilhelm II – reportedly a mercurial man whose very excesses and volatility ensured he would be Germany's last emperor. Never forget: every choice carries a price – nothing comes without a cost. If you lean toward the ominous and sinister, consider this chilling conspiracy theory: Trump may have been elevated not to succeed, but to fail – spectacularly. His rise may have been engineered as a political vaccine, paving the way for a calculated liberal restoration, swiftly reversing his agenda and quietly entrenching progressive rule over countless electoral cycles. By similar conspiratorial logic, Hitler's ascent to absolute power could be seen as a dark gambit – to inoculate the German people against authoritarianism, militant nationalism, and anti-Judaism, and to catalyze the creation of Israel. Both, perhaps, were dialectical masterstrokes – premeditated catharses, with doomed, fateful figureheads cast as sacrifices to reshape history through fire. Even in his unhinged state, Trump could still, in theory, learn from past missteps and change course – but the odds are vanishingly slim. His five fatal flaws are poised to seal his fate. As Oscar Wilde observed, 'All great men are gifted with destruction.' The Apprentice star seemed to have peaked on the first day in office; his undoing may take multiple forms, each varying in drama and pace. Trump might come down 'not with a bang but a whimper,' reduced to a lame-duck after a midterm humiliation of his party. More spectacular exits include second-term impeachment or post-presidency criminal conviction. Or perhaps no rupture at all – just a legacy of failure, etched in history not for triumph, but for squandered power. To conclude, Donald Trump is such stuff as tragedies are made on. The man can be compared to the typical protagonist in classical Attic tragedy – not a pure hero or a true villain, but a flawed, elevated figure, whose all-too-human weaknesses drive his fall, echoing the narrative arc of classical Attic tragedy. Inspiring pity through his suffering and fear that his fate could be ours, the tragic hero typically begins noble and strong, but caught in a web of dark forces and blinded by pride or misled by a fateful error, engineers his own downfall – seeing clearly and recognizing the truth only when it is too late. Longfellow's apt warning echoes like a tragic chorus: 'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.'
