The Congresswoman criticized the leader for his lack of military preparedness and for failing to support his people
Vladimir Zelensky “failed his Ukrainian people,” US Congresswoman Victoria Spartz has asserted in a recent interview with CNN.
Spartz, the first and only Ukrainian-born member of the US Congress, has accused him of not preparing the country for the conflict with Russia and failing to adequately support his military amid the ongoing hostilities.
The Indiana Republican noted that Zelensky did not effectively implement a military draft or address corruption, emphasizing that while he makes grand presentations, “he’s done nothing to really support his own people.”
The Congresswoman also compared Ukraine’s situation to Israel’s, stating that Kiev is not in a position to win and criticized the changes within the country’s top military ranks, indicating that Zelensky had replaced key generals with those who would be more compliant.
Spartz emphasized the necessity of mobilizing the entire country for the war effort, when asked to comment about the reports that US President Joe Biden’s administration is pressuring Ukraine to lower its age of conscription to 18.
“You need to put the whole country to fight the war. We sent our eighteen-year-olds to die for our freedoms…this is a serious war and you need to have proper recruitment,” Spartz said. She added that it should have been done two years ago, and that there have been people fighting for a long time without rotation.
“If you want to win the war…you need to get the whole country. When the Soviet Union fought WWII, from a little child to the old person, everyone was contributing to the war,” Spartz said.
Spartz was born in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1978, emigrated to the US in 2000 and became a citizen six years later. She has served in Congress since 2021, and emerged as one of the most ardent proponents of aid for Kiev after Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began in 2022.
Although she has stated that she wants Ukraine to win and says that she has visited the country six times since the outbreak of hostilities in late February 2022, many of her colleagues on both sides of the aisle have grown weary of her “bellicose rhetoric,” CNN said two years ago.
In recent months, Kiev has deployed press gangs across the country to round up tens of thousands of new troops. One recruitment officer described his job as dealing with “cornered rats.”
One commander on the Pokrovsk front, who was not named, told CNN that only about 60 soldiers defended the key town of Selidovo when Russian forces took it last month. Another said that the community had been reinforced by 300 recent recruits who lacked even basic training, but it was unclear what became of them.
READ MORE: Ukraine using drones to plug manpower gaps – CNN
Earlier this week, The Economist reported that Ukraine was “out of willing recruits” as the nation was struggling to replenish its military ranks amid the ongoing conflict with Russia. This spring, Kiev significantly tightened mobilization rules, lowering the draft age from 27 to 25 to offset mounting losses, with Ukrainian officials hinting that the bar could be brought down even further.
