Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the rigours of nearly three years of war did not allow for changes in mobilization rules because if soldiers left for home en masse, Russian President Vladimir Putin \u201cwill kill us all.\u201d
\nZelensky told Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who was released this month after being detained for 21 days in Iran, that the toll of war on Ukrainians and their families underscored the need to bring the conflict rapidly to an end.
\nParliament approved new mobilization rules last year to boost numbers of those at the front, but Ukraine\u2019s fighting forces are still badly outnumbered by their Russian adversaries.
\n\u201cThe wartime situation calls for mobilization of people and all the resources we have in the country. Absolutely all of them,\u201d Zelensky said in the interview, excerpts of which were posted on the president\u2019s Telegram channel.
\n\u201cAnd, unfortunately, that is the challenge of this war and that is why we have to speed things up to the maximum to end it, to oblige Russia to end this war,\u201d Zelensky said.
\n\u201cToday, we are defending ourselves. If tomorrow, for instance, half the army heads home, we really should have surrendered on the very first day. That is how it is. If half the army goes home, Putin will kill us all.\u201d
\nThe legislation approved last year, lowered the age of mobilization for Ukrainian men from 27 to 25 years, narrowed exemptions and imposed penalties on evaders.
\nZelensky and others have rejected suggestions by politicians in the United States, Ukraine\u2019s biggest Western backer, that the draft age be lowered further on grounds that Ukrainian forces at the front are not sufficiently well armed.
\nMembers of some units in areas deemed critical to ensuring Ukraine\u2019s defensive lines have not enjoyed any leave since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
\nRussian forces failed in their initial advance on the capital Kyiv, but have since focused their efforts on securing all of Donbas, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in Ukraine\u2019s east.
\nRussian forces occupy about 20 percent of Ukraine\u2019s territory and have been recording their fastest gains since the invasion in their advance in the east, while holding part of four Ukrainian regions.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the rigours of nearly three years of war did not allow for changes in mobilization rules because if soldiers left for home en masse, Russian President Vladimir Putin \u201cwill kill us all.\u201d Zelensky told Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who was released this month after being detained for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":76206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76215,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76189\/revisions\/76215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}