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The U.S. is telling Ukraine that it needs to draft more soldiers to bolster its outmanned forces in its nearly three-year fight against Russia's invasion, saying Kyiv should cut its conscription age from 25 to 18.
"The need right now is manpower," one U.S. official told reporters on Wednesday. "The Russians are in fact making progress, steady progress, in the east, and they are beginning to push back Ukrainian lines in Kursk," the Russian region that Ukraine captured in August in an attack that surprised Moscow.
Ukrainian "mobilization and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time as we look at the battlefield today," the official said.
More than 1 million Ukrainians are now in uniform, including National Guard and other units. The U.S. official said the Ukrainians believe they need about 160,000 additional troops, but the U.S. administration said they probably will need more than that.
The official said "the pure math" of Ukraine's situation now is that it needs more troops in the fight, a position echoed in other Western capitals that have armed Ukraine.
In April, Ukraine cut its draft-eligible age for men from 27 to 25, a change that was expected to add 50,000 troops, far short of what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was needed then.
Some Ukrainians have expressed concerns that cutting the draft-eligible age for men to 18, the age for mandatory draft registration in the U.S., would take more young adults out of the workforce and further harm the country's war-ravaged economy.
The U.S. official said the administration of President Joe Biden, who leaves office in less than two months, believes that Ukraine also can optimize its current force by more aggressively dealing with soldiers who desert or go absent without leave.
Additionally, Ukraine's European allies have emphasized that the shortage of Ukrainian troops may soon make it untenable for Ukraine to continue to operate in Kursk.
The situation in Kursk has been complicated by the arrival of thousands of North Korean troops who were deployed there to help Moscow try to recapture the land Ukraine seized nearly four months ago.
The extent of continued U.S. support for Ukraine's war effort is uncertain as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office January 20.
Trump has vowed to end the war before he takes office but not said how.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that Russian forces launched 89 drones in a wave of overnight attacks that left three people injured in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. Ukraine said it shot down 36 of the unmanned aircraft.
Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv's City Military Administration, said on Telegram that falling debris from a destroyed drone damaged a building.
Russia's Defense Ministry said it shot down 47 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea, Russia-occupied Crimea and elsewhere.
There were no reports of major damage from the Ukrainian attacks.
"The only effective way to protect ourselves from this is to eliminate Russian weapons and Russian launchers directly on Russian territory," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Tuesday.
Escalation in warfare
At the United Nations on Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council discussed the latest escalation in the war, including Russia's use of a new intermediate range ballistic missile against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
"Over the last few days alone, 495 UAVS [i.e., drones] were launched by Russia, along with Iskandar ballistic missiles and Kh-59/69 guided air to surface missiles," Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told the council.
Kyslytsya said stronger sanctions are required against Moscow, and he urged countries to provide Ukraine with increased military assistance.
"Russia must understand that its every attempt to expand the war will have consequences," he said.
The Russian envoy said any escalation should be laid at the feet of Kyiv and its U.S. and Western backers, who have recently authorized Ukraine to use Western-made missiles deep inside Russia.
"The West from that moment, provoked a regional conflict in Ukraine that has now taken on a global nature," Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said, adding that "every wave of escalation from the West is going to be decisively responded to."
Washington's envoy said it is providing Ukraine with hundreds of additional Patriot and AMRAAM missiles to strengthen its air defenses in light of Russia's expanding war.
"The United States will continue to surge security assistance to Ukraine to strengthen its capabilities, including air defense, and put Ukraine in the best possible position on the battlefield," U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Robert Wood said.
Diplomats also expressed concern at the entry into the war of thousands of North Korean troops on the side of Russia.
"In return for sending its troops, my government assesses that the DPRK has received from Russia, not only economic benefits, but also anti-aircraft missiles and equipment to reinforce its weak air defense systems," South Korean Ambassador Joonkook Hwang said.
He said Russia's support for North Korea would embolden it to intensify its pursuit of nuclear weapons, further destabilizing the Korean Peninsula.
"The DPRK is preparing to transfer even more ballistic missiles" to Russia for use against Ukraine, Ambassador Wood warned. "We also have information a large number of DPRK-origin 170-millimeter long-range self-propelled artillery pieces and 240-millimeter long-range multiple rocket launchers are being introduced into the conflict."
He said Washington also has information that Russia has transferred air defense systems to North Korea.
VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report from New York. Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.