A senior White House official urged Kyiv on Thursday to lower conscription age to 18 to replenish the losses of manpower in Donbas, where Russian forces have spurred their advance on several strategic, heavily fortified strongholds.

“The need right now is manpower,” the unnamed official told reporters in Washington. “Mobilisation and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time, as we look at the battlefield today.”

Ukraine’s top brass has not even discussed the issue.

“No meetings to discuss this issue have been held, no suggestions on lowering [the conscription age] have been made,” a source in Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

So far, Kyiv has officially responded with a refusal and a rebuke.

“It doesn’t make sense to see calls for Ukraine to lower the mobilisation age, presumably in order to draft more people, when we can see that previously announced [Western military] equipment is not arriving on time,” Dmitry Litvin, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, posted on X.

“Because of these delays, Ukraine lacks weapons to equip already mobilised soldiers,” he wrote.