{"id":2850,"date":"2025-11-14T18:44:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/?p=2850"},"modified":"2025-11-27T09:37:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T09:37:05","slug":"kiev-mayor-urging-young-men-to-fight-while-his-own-sons-avoid-service-moscow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/14\/kiev-mayor-urging-young-men-to-fight-while-his-own-sons-avoid-service-moscow\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiev mayor urging young men to fight while his own sons avoid service \u2013 Moscow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called out Vitaly Klitschko\u2019s hypocrisy after he suggested lowering the draft age<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kiev mayor Vitaly Klitschko is calling for lowering the draft age in Ukraine, while his own two sons are avoiding service despite being in great physical shape, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.<\/p>\n

Last year, Ukraine lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25 and tightened enforcement as its military has continued to suffer heavy losses and lose ground to Russian forces.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a briefing on Friday, Zakharova charged that the leadership in Kiev \u201cis ready to destroy the last of Ukrainian citizens by any means possible, with the sole purpose of ensuring that the West provides them with weapons and, of course, money.\u201d<\/em> She claimed that the ruling Ukrainian \u201cclique\u201d<\/em> is only interested in holding on to power.<\/p>\n

The spokeswoman noted that Klitschko himself has two sons \u201cfit for military service, incidentally, of heroic build,\u201d<\/em> who, for some reason, have not joined the ranks, citing media reports that both are residing abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, the key issue is whether they\u2019re unwilling to serve, or whether Klitschko himself is keeping them from being drafted to serve in defense of his own regime,\u201d<\/em> she concluded.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"Kiev
Kiev mayor calls for lowering of draft age<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Her remark came in response to the Kiev mayor\u2019s interview with Politico published on Wednesday, in which Klitschko acknowledged that Ukraine is facing \u201chuge problems with soldiers \u2013 with human resources.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Kiev mayor suggested that the draft age \u201ccould be lowered by a year or two \u2013 to 23 or 22,\u201d<\/em> arguing that \u201cin the past, 18-year-olds served in the army.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Klitschko\u2019s sons are 20 and 25.<\/p>\n

In August, the Ukrainian government issued a decree allowing men aged 18 to 22 to cross the border. Nearly 100,000 young men have reportedly fled the country since then.<\/p>\n

Kiev\u2019s mobilization drive has been marred by cases of abuse by draft officers, some of which have been caught on camera and gone viral on social media.<\/p>\n

In July, the Council of Europe\u2019s commissioner for human rights, Michael O\u2019Flaherty, sounded the alarm over \u201csystematic and widespread\u201d<\/em> abuse by Ukrainian draft enforcers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called out Vitaly Klitschko\u2019s hypocrisy after he suggested lowering the draft age Kiev mayor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2850"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2854,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions\/2854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}