The United States has asked Ukrainian officials to consider lowering the age limit of its soldiers to 18 years old as Washington believes Kyiv has not been “mobilising or training enough new soldiers for its ongoing war with Russia”.
This new suggestion of the United States suggests it does not intend to dial down the tensions between Kyiv and Moscow.
Last week, the Ukrainian forces carried out their first strike on a border region in Russia using Western-supplied missiles as President Vladimir Putin approved an updated nuclear doctrine expanding the conditions for using atomic weapons.
Ukraine deployed ATACMS missiles to strike a military facility in the western Bryansk region, Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement on Telegram. It was the first known attack following the decision by President Joe Biden’s administration to approve Kyiv’s limited use of the weapons to hit targets inside Russia, two months before Donald Trump took over promising to quickly end the war.
Later, in a stark demonstration of its growing military arsenal, Russia fired an experimental hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday.
The next day, the Kremlin said the strike was designed to warn the West that Moscow will respond to moves by the US and Britain to let Kyiv strike Russia with their missiles.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking a day after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had fired the new missile – the Oreshnik or Hazel Tree – at a Ukrainian military facility.
Putin had previously warned that such moves would implicate Nato in the conflict.
“Western approval for these strikes would mean direct NATO involvement because their infrastructure and personnel would be essential for targeting,” Putin said.