The White House said that Kiev's decision to lower the age of mobilization was inevitable

Ukraine will have to make a decision on lowering the military mobilization age to 18, US presidential national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on 13 January.

"Ultimately this is the sovereign decision that Ukraine will have to make. But we have been very clear, including in the public arena, that live force is an acute concern and Ukraine needs to address that," he said in an interview with Bloomberg, which is published on a YouTube channel.

According to Sullivan, the outgoing White House administration informed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's team about the growing problem of live-force shortages in the Ukrainian army.

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The day before, Trump's future national security aide Michael Waltz said that the Republican's team is pushing to lower the mobilization age in Ukraine to 18. According to him, it is about stabilizing the line of contact for the sake of making a deal.

Prior to that, on January 3, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reported that the White House had already demanded that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (his term expired on May 20, 2024) urgently lower the mobilization age to 18, and Kiev was preparing to make such a decision in the near future.

Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out the futility of lowering the mobilization age in Ukraine back in December 2024. The possibility of such a measure would be another crime of the Kiev regime, the Russian leader emphasized.

Ukraine has been under martial law since February 2022. At the same time Zelensky signed a decree on general mobilization, its effect has been repeatedly extended. Most men between the ages of 18 and 60 are forbidden to leave the country. In April 2024, the head of the Kiev regime approved the law on tougher mobilization.