Why NATO’s Plan to Conscript Ukraine’s Youth Will Fail

Professor Glenn Diesen

NATO continues to pressure Ukraine to lower its conscription age to 18 as the huge casualties by Ukraine have resulted in a lack of manpower. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is pressuring Ukraine into “getting younger people into the fight”, while NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has been more cautious in his language by arguing “We need probably more people to move to the front line”.[1] The incoming Trump administration also appears to take the same line, as Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Walz argued that lowering the conscription age could “generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers”.[2]

While there is seemingly bipartisan support in the US for sacrificing Ukraine’s youth, the plan is deeply flawed. The Ukrainians are overwhelmingly in favour of immediate negotiations, the Ukrainian government resists the pressure from NATO, and there is very little chance that the new recruits will significantly improve the situation.

Bring Russia to the negotiation table & negotiate from a position of strength

NATO’s argument is seemingly reasonable: More Ukrainian soldiers are necessary to pressure Russia to the negotiation table and to negotiate from a position of strength.

However, the need to pressure Russia to the negotiation table is based on lies as Russia has been open to negotiations over the past three years. NATO has rejected negotiations and even basic diplomacy with Russia for three years that may have prevented escalation and possibly led to peace. Russia contacted Ukraine already on the first day after the Russian invasion, to negotiate a peace agreement based on putting an end to NATO expansion. President Zelensky confirmed on 25 February 2022: “Today we heard from Moscow that they still want to talk. They want to talk about Ukraine's neutral status”.[3] The US and UK sabotaged the Istanbul peace agreement to pursue a long war. In March 2022, Zelensky confirmed in an interview with the Economist: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”.[4] By rejecting any diplomacy and negotiations, NATO made it a war of attrition as Russia was left with the dilemma of either continuing the fight or capitulating.

The need to negotiate from a position of strength is a reasonable objective, yet there are reasons to doubt NATO’s sincerity. Is NATO attempting to strengthen Ukraine’s position in negotiations or to keep the war going? On 27 February 2022, the same day that Russia and Ukraine announced peace talks, the EU approved 450 million Euros in military aid to Ukraine, which reduced the incentives for Kiev to negotiate with Moscow.[5] The consistent argument has been that Ukraine must negotiate from a position of strength, yet it has been three years of intensive war and NATO countries still react with panic as Trump prepares to start negotiations to end the war.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, recognised in November 2022 that the Ukrainians were in an ideal situation to start negotiations after successes on the battlefield. Milley recognised that a military victory was impossible to achieve and that this was therefore the optimal time to negotiate.[6] Fearing that its long war would end, the Biden administration quickly intervened and Milley had to walk back his comments.

What will NATO and Ukraine achieve with their strengthened position at the negotiation table? Russia considers NATO’s incursion into Ukraine to be an existential threat and will not accept any peace agreement that does not result in restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. Both the Israeli and Turkish mediators during the peace negotiations in 2022 recognised that Russia was prepared to compromise on anything, besides the issue of NATO expansion. NATO’s continuous promise of membership for Ukraine in the military bloc after the war is over has made a peaceful settlement impossible and thus cemented the conditions for a long war. Strengthening Ukraine’s army will not soften Russia’s position.

What is the likely outcome?

Forcing hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians into the army will undoubtedly slow down the Russian advances, although it cannot stop or reverse the Russian military. The Ukrainian army has been exhausted, and a new army cannot simply be built from scratch. The losses on the battlefield and lies from their government have diminished morale, which will not be improved by sending less experienced young men into a battlefield dominated by Russia.

Trump will likely be able to pressure Zelensky to lower the conscription age, yet this will be incredibly unpopular among the Ukrainian population. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want negotiations to start immediately, not to sacrifice their youth in a lost war. Newsweek reports that “Over 6 million Ukrainians of conscription age haven't complied with legislation introduced last year to boost dwindling troop numbers fighting Russia”. The public wants an end to the war, not send their teenagers to die.

Conscription of Ukraine’s youth will cause great social upheaval in a society that is already fed up with watching their men being snatched from the streets and thrown into vans by “recruiters”. These young men are also important for the workforce to keep the economy going, which will be lost if they are conscripted or go into hiding. Once the war is finally over, these young men are indispensable to rebuilding Ukraine which is already facing a demographic crisis.

Ukraine cannot survive more “help”

Between 1991 and 2014, the US attempted to help Ukraine into NATO despite that only 20% of Ukrainians desired membership in the military alliance during this time. In 2014, NATO helped Ukrainians topple their government in an unconstitutional coup without majority support from Ukrainians. Rather than implementing the Minsk peace agreement, NATO helped Ukraine build a large army so it could instead change realities on the ground. When 73% of Ukrainians voted for Zelensky’s peace platform in 2019, NATO helped Ukraine avoid “capitulation” by pressuring Zelensky to reverse his position. In 2021, NATO helped Ukraine by refusing to give any security guarantees to Russia, even as Biden and Stoltenberg recognised that Russia would invade without security guarantees. In 2022, the US and UK helped Ukraine by pressuring Kiev to abandon a peace agreement in which the Russians committed to pulling its troops back in return for neutrality. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, large parts of its territory have been lost and the nation may not survive - NATO is now attempting to help yet again by pressuring war-weary Ukrainians to also sacrifice their youth. Irrespective of any new soldiers entering the war, the position of Ukraine will only continue to get worse.

If NATO really wants to help Ukraine and strengthen its position at the negotiation table, NATO should offer Russia what it wants the most – a pan-European security agreement based on indivisible security that replaces the zero-sum bloc politics. This is the best option for the West, Russia and Ukraine.

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[1] A. Medhani, ‘White House pressing Ukraine to draft 18-year-olds so it has enough troops to battle Russia’, AP News, 28 November 2024.

[2] B. Gaddy, 'Rep. Waltz: Negotiations to release Hamas hostages are underway', ABC News, 12 January 2025

[3] V. Zelensky, ‘Address by the President to Ukrainians at the end of the first day of Russia's attacks’, President of Ukraine: Official website, 25 February 2022.

[4] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.

[5] J. Deutsch and L. Pronina, ‘EU Approves 450 Million Euros of Arms Supplies for Ukraine’, Bloomberg, 27 February 2022.

[6] O. Libermann, 'Top US general argues Ukraine may be in a position of strength to negotiate Russian withdrawal', CNN, 16 November 2022.