The White House has said Ukraine must recruit more soldiers for its war with Russia, including by lowering the conscription age, as a shortage of manpower, not weapons, is the country’s most pressing need.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government should consider lowering the conscription age to 18 from 25 to create the necessary flow of new soldiers to rotate to the front lines, a senior government official told reporters on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.

This message is the clearest message yet of the nervousness of the US and its allies over Zelensky’s resistance to enlisting younger soldiers. The Ukrainian leader has said there is no need to lower the conscription age, an idea that had been pushed by allies in response to his demand for security and economic guarantees that he saw as the country’s “winning plan”.

With less than two months in office, the Biden administration has also sought to bolster Ukraine’s military capabilities before President-elect Donald Trump takes the reins.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs he reported earlier on Wednesday that the idea being circulated in some circles that the West should give in to Ukraine nuclear weapons is “crazy” and that preventing such a scenario was one of the reasons why Moscow invaded Ukraine.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said it was in the interest of Western governments to ensure that such a scenario, which she called “suicidal,” did not materialize.

Zakharova said such “irresponsible actions” by Ukraine and its Western backers could bring the world to the “brink of disaster”.