Ukraine has a terrible manpower problem. Retired Army Lt. General Keith Kellogg thinks he has part of the answer: draft women.

That recommendation might be provocative coming from any retired American general. Coming from Kellogg, it carries considerably more weight.

Kellogg served as President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine until the end of 2025, then said he wanted to be more open and free to talk about Ukraine than he could inside the administration. This was his sixth trip to Ukraine since leaving office; on August 22 he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Ukraine’s urgent need for Patriot air-defense missiles. Two days later, he waded into a far more sensitive question.

Asked whether Ukraine should mobilize women into its military, Kellogg answered: “My answer is yes, because they fight no worse than men.” He added that it was “very important for women, as part of society, to serve,” and said he saw no problem with the idea personally or professionally.

I do.

The problem is not whether women can serve effectively; thousands already do, courageously. The problem is that a distinguished former American official, whose words carry unusual authority in Kyiv, used that influence to advocate a radical solution for a nation dependent on the United States for its survival.

That was wrong. Kellogg no longer speaks for President Trump, but influence does not disappear the day someone turns in his White House badge. Ukrainians know he was Trump’s envoy and that their president still meets with him. Coming from him, this cannot be heard in Kyiv as merely another retiree’s opinion.

Washington has been Ukraine’s principal backer through this war, and a former envoy’s suggestions carry a force an ordinary commentator’s do not. With influence comes responsibility. Before urging another nation to conscript its women, he had better be certain the prescription is militarily necessary, evidence-based, and morally defensible.

Kellogg’s sweeping assertion that women “fight no worse than men” does not meet that test.

Ukraine’s women have already shown they can serve bravely and effectively; more than 75,000 were serving as of early 2026, including over 5,500 on the front line. That deserves admiration, but it does not answer Kellogg’s question: there is an enormous difference between letting a qualified woman volunteer and compelling women as a class because a government is short of fighting-age men.

Ukraine’s parliament seems to recognize that distinction. Its National Security Committee quickly said mobilizing women was “not being carried out, prepared or considered,” and that women join the Defense Forces voluntarily. But Kellogg’s rationale, that women should be mobilized because they “fight no worse than men,” raises what planners cannot avoid: military service and direct ground combat are not the same thing.

I confronted this question a decade ago researching my 2013 book, “Deadly Consequences: How Cowards Are Pushing Women into Combat.” My concern was never whether women are patriotic, courageous, or willing to sacrifice; American women had proved that many times over. The question was whether claims of interchangeability survive the physical realities of close combat.

Infantry combat is not an equal-opportunity seminar. I know that firsthand, having served two decades as an infantryman in four divisions on three continents. Soldiers haul equipment for miles, drag wounded comrades, sprint under fire and dig positions, then repeat it exhausted. Ukraine has added trench warfare and casualty rates few Western militaries have faced in generations.

When the Marine Corps tested integrated ground-combat units, a peer-reviewed study found 40.5% of women suffered musculoskeletal injuries, versus 18.8% of men. The Army found the same pattern: a congressionally directed RAND analysis found only 52% of enlisted women passed the Army Combat Fitness Test, versus 92% of men, and RAND warned that closing the gap meant accepting “differences in potential combat readiness” among soldiers held to different standards.

That test was never an infantry qualification, and the Army’s latest move sharpens the point: this year it introduced a Combat Field Test for 24 combat specialties, pass/fail and age- and sex-neutral. Why? Because the enemy does not issue lighter ammunition to a woman. The standard follows the mission.

Kellogg pointed to women in his own family: his daughter graduated from West Point and served in Afghanistan; his wife served as a paratrooper in Grenada. Their service deserves respect, but it proves only what nobody disputes, that exceptional women can perform demanding duties, not that the average conscripted woman and man are interchangeable for sustained combat. Policy cannot be built around exceptional cases.

There is another path for those who believe Ukraine must expand women’s role. Former Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has proposed mandatory service using women mainly away from the front, freeing more men for combat, quite different from asserting that women simply “fight no worse than men.”

That is where Kellogg’s intervention troubles me most. Ukraine is bleeding, and every mobilization order reaches families already living with years of death and separation. Conscription is among the most coercive powers a government exercises; the state is not merely demanding money or obedience but potentially a citizen’s life. An American who once represented the president should be reluctant to prescribe which segment of Ukrainian society ought to bear that burden. Especially its women.

Norway has adopted sex-neutral conscription; other NATO members facing Russia directly still require compulsory service from men while women serve voluntarily. There is no settled Western consensus on this. Ukrainians must have that debate themselves. Kellogg entered it carrying something no Ukrainian academic or retired officer possesses: the residual authority of the American presidency.

There is a moral case here too, not only a practical one. Scripture does not call men to conscript women into war’s worst dangers; it calls them to honor women as the “weaker vessel,” co-heirs of the same grace of life (1 Peter 3:7). That command assumes real physical difference, not diminished worth. A society that answers a manpower shortage by sending its daughters into trench warfare has inverted that order, treating protection as optional rather than owed. Kellogg’s argument asks Ukraine’s men to set aside precisely the burden Scripture assigns them.

Scripture does not treat mobilization for war as a matter for slogans. When Israel prepared for battle, the Law required officers to exempt the newly married, the man who had just built a house or planted a vineyard, and the fearful (Deuteronomy 20:5-8), a deliberate reckoning over who could bear the burden. That reckoning belongs to Ukraine’s government, not a retired American general.

Ukraine’s women do not need Kellogg, or me, to tell them whether they are courageous; thousands have answered that already. The issue is whether an influential American should encourage a desperate ally to turn voluntary sacrifice into compulsory obligation on the premise that women “fight no worse than men.” The evidence does not support so sweeping a claim. Desperation cannot erase biology, and equality does not require military interchangeability.

Keith Kellogg has earned the right to be heard. That is precisely why he should have been more careful about what he asked Ukraine’s daughters to do.