[gizmondo]

Ukraine’s situation is worse than many people realize. Ukraine is losing the war right now with roughly equal support in monetary terms from both US and EU! They have huge manpower problems because of losses and apparent political inability to mobilize enough men. Even if EU suddenly doubled its aid to compensate (which I think is _very_ unlikely), there are gaps in weapons production in Europe, e.g. for SAMs.

[alabastervlog]

Manpower was always going to be their hardest-to-overcome problem in a protracted war. The relative population sizes when the war started meant they needed an extremely positive kill/death ratio (if you will) just to stay at parity.

[Muromec]

Being on the defense and retreating gives exactly that parity. Soviet doctrine even has a number for that which is somewhat close to the ratio of Ukrainian to russian populations.

[actionfromafar]

We have powerful weapons now. Manpower is not the (most) limiting factor. If the Ukraine had 10 times its current long range drone production, the Russians would start whining about peace deals.

[lawn]

How would you categorize Russia's manpower problem, given that they need to rely on North Korea for people, have to send injured soldiers back to the front line, and suffer multiple more deaths and injuries compared to Ukraine?

[gizmondo]

It's bad, but not as dire. Russian losses are very likely higher, but if I have to guess - multiples of 2 and above are just propaganda mixed with wishful thinking. They still didn't need to resort to further rounds of mobilization since 2022 or large scale usage of conscripts. And I don't understand what "North Korea" argument even is - Ukrainians would love to rely on someone else! But no one is willing to help in this department.

[alabastervlog]

They're trying to avoid extensive drafts in their power-base cities for fear of unrest. Plus that's their reserve if they need to supply a second front for any reason.

[snovymgodym]

> How would you categorize Russia's manpower problem

As strained, but not as bad as Ukraine's.

Russia's population is over 140 million. That's 100 million more than Ukraine's pre-war population. Russia's territory isn't meaningfully compromised, their cities aren't in ruin, their industry is mostly intact. They haven't sustained something like 15-25% population loss from people fleeing the way Ukraine has.

North Koreans aren't in Russia because Russia is out of guys. Putin just wants to avoid wider scale conscription/mobilization if he can help it and will take other options first

That's why earlier stages of this war involved ex-convict Wagnerite units, mercenaries from the third world, local militias raised from the "people's republics" in Donetsk and Luhansk, and conscription when necessary from poorer ethnic minority regions far away from Moscow and St. Petersburg.

[cyberax]

> Ukraine is losing the war right now

Ukraine is _stalling_ the war right now. Russia is able to capture more moonscaped villages by forcing expendable (their words, not mine) manpower to assault Ukrainian positions.

Ukraine is slowly retreating, but at the rate that will require Russia _years_ to gain a meaningful amount of territory.

[gizmondo]

The military experts I listen to all more or less agree that the focus on territory is just wrong. It's a war of attrition unsustainable in the long run for both sides, the question is who runs out of resources first (or if there is some sort of ceasefire before that). Germany famously lost such a war a century ago without losing any territory!

[DennisP]

And that will cost Russia a great deal. This has turned into a war that heavily favors defenders. Both sides are dug in, with a wide no-mans-land between the front lines, where anyone who enters is likely to get killed by a drone.

[TomK32]

Ukraine has been loosing a three-day-special operation for three years.

Russia's refinery's are getting hit and all that crude oil is worthless with a refinery. In the case of the campaign again Nazi Germany's refineries funny enough it's the allies who didn't think it as critical as the Nazis did https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_campaign_of_World_War_II#O...