ST. PETERSBURG. June 5 (Interfax) - The United States demands that Ukraine lower the mobilization age to 18, after which they will say "goodbye" to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
"Here now they have lowered it from 27 [years] to 25 [the mobilization age in Ukraine], and we just know this from the Ukrainian side, it's all a Polichinelle secret there, there are no secrets at all, so the U.S. administration insists that the threshold be at least gradually reduced from 25 to 23, then to 20 years, and then to 18," Putin said at a meeting with foreign journalists on Wednesday.
Ukraine is currently "already requiring that 17-year-old young men be registered," Putin said. He noted that Russia knows "for sure" that "this is a demand from the U.S. administration to the Ukrainian leadership," he said. "May it be considered leadership after the elections [of the Ukrainian president in 2024] were canceled," Putin said.
After "the U.S. administration compels the current Ukrainian leadership to make these decisions to lower the mobilization age to 18, they will simply get rid of Zelensky," Putin said.
"But first, all of this has to be done, because it's not an easy story: the law has to be passed, [and] certain steps have to be taken. Now we are in June 2024. Here, to do all of this, it seems to me, it takes a year, it is until spring - until the beginning of at least the next year he [Zelensky] will be tolerated. When he does everything, they will say, 'Well, and goodbye' and change him," Putin said, adding that, as far as he is concerned, "there are several candidates [for Ukrainian president]."