White House Sees Solution to Ukraine's Manpower Problem

President Biden's administration is urging Ukraine to quickly increase the size of its military by drafting more troops and revamping its mobilization laws to allow for the conscription of troops as young as 18. A senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private consultations, told the AP on Wednesday that the outgoing Democratic administration wants Ukraine to lower the mobilization age to 18 from the current age of 25 to help expand the pool of fighting-age men available to help a badly outmanned Ukraine in its nearly three-year-old war with Russia. The official said "the pure math" of Ukraine's situation now is that it needs more troops in the fight. More on the situation:

• The arms are in place: The White House has pushed more than $56 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of Russia's February 2022 invasion and expects to send billions more to Kyiv before Biden leaves office. But with time running out, the Biden White House is also sharpening its viewpoint that Ukraine has the weaponry it needs and now must dramatically increase its manpower if it's going to stay in the fight with Russia.

• The numbers: The official said the Ukrainians believe they need about 160,000 additional troops, but the US administration believes they probably will need more than that. More than 1 million Ukrainians are now in uniform, including National Guard and other units.
• Echoes from Europe: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also been hearing concerns from allies in other Western capitals that Ukraine has a manpower problem and not an arms problem, according to European officials who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic conversations. The European allies have also stressed that the lack of depth in manpower means that it may soon become untenable for Ukraine to continue to operate in Russia's Kursk border region that Ukraine seized this year.

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• Previous efforts: Ukraine has taken steps to broaden the pool of draft-eligible men, but the efforts have only scratched the surface against a much larger Russian military. In April, Ukraine's parliament passed a series of laws that lowered its draft-eligible age for men from 27 to 25, did away with some draft exemptions, and created an online registry for recruits. They were expected to add about 50,000 troops, far short of what Zelensky said at the time was needed.
• Concerns: Some Ukrainians have expressed worry that further lowering the minimum conscription age and taking more young adults out of the workforce could backfire by further harming the war-ravaged economy.

(More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)