The following is an excellent synopsis of one of the most difficult issues of Russia's war on Ukraine, the question of how many soldiers Russia has available to carry out its war, by Ukraine Reporter at @StateofUkaine--"Award-winning muckrakers and researchers from Ukraine and Russia with long-standing ties to the US and MENA. Protecting identities to preserve independence." I've consolidated their X (Twitter) thread below to make it easy to read.
Ukraine Reporter makes the point that, while Russia needs more soldiers than it has to ensure its success, Ukraine not only needs more soldiers but also Western weapons, that Ukraine might have won already in late 2022 if the West had provided more of those weapons. This is largely correct but I am uncomfortable with the way that argument is often made by many communitators. It is too close to Russia's false claim that Ukraine is acting solely as an agent of the West and, in particular, NATO. Ukraine did not resist Russia's invasion predicated on or based on Western assistance and did not succeed everyone's--especially the Russian's--expectations based on Western arms. In fact, the Ukrainians fought regardless of Western support and will continue to fight. Their capacity to fight Russia might be lower without Western weapons, but they will fight; perhaps by again exceeding expectations or at least through guerilla warfare. Russia will never succeed in suppressing the Ukrainian people or state. It is too late for that. As the Ukraine Reporter analysis suggests, Russia is just as likely to lose its war on Ukraine. The real question is whether Russia also fails as a state and enters the dustbin of history.
Ukraine Reporter:
Russia is actively recruiting soldiers to replace massive casualties in Ukraine, bolstering the myth of almost endless Russian human resources. We've been looking into it, and the picture isn't as pretty as the Putin regime would like the world to believe.
After realizing that 200k troops was not enough to defeat Ukraine in 2022, Russia started using every recruitment trick in the book, in many cases, using methods directly from Stalin's playbook.
In the early part of 2022, Russia was able to recruit Russian nationalists and other ideologically-motivated volunteers, who had already served in the Russian army (in many cases they were old enough to have served in the Soviet Army) or hadn't been eligible for service.
Nationalistic volunteers were not necessarily fighting only for money, in many cases they believed that they were helping restore Russia to some kind of previous glory, whether Soviet or pre-Soviet imperial.
In parallel, in 2022, Russia increased mobilization efforts in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk, hunting down young and old men alike who had previously evaded serving in Russian DPR/LNR units. In 2022, these men formed the bulk of Russian cannon fodder.
Forcing Ukrainian citizens stuck in Russian-occupied territories into meat storms was an ideal strategy for Russia because it helped insulate Russian society from massive casualties, but eventually that resource started running out.
By fall 2022, Ukraine had mobilized close to a million motivated people, outnumbering Russian troops, many of whom were now disillusioned by the war. At this critical juncture, had the West surged weapons to Ukraine, Russian front lines would have completely collapsed.
Indeed, by late fall 2022, Ukraine has liberated most of the Kharkiv region and the city of Kherson, pushing Russian troops to the eastern bank of the Dnipro. At this point, the momentum was on Ukraine's side.
As Ukrainians pleaded for an increase in weapons and ammo to take advantage of a small window of opportunity to decisively defeat Russia when it was on the back foot, Russian commanders were pleading for additional troops to prevent the looming defeat.
As a million Ukrainians were forced to wait for weapons that never arrived or were severely and deliberately delayed by the West, instead of quickly liberating poorly defended Russian-occupied territories, Russia began mobilizing several hundred thousand troops.
Thanks to the Russian mobilization effort and cooperation from a West uncommitted to a Ukrainian victory, Russia stabilized the front lines and renewed its own offensive operations.
Although Russia's capacity, such as facilities and personnel, to train new recruits were limited, Russia used Belarus to expand that capacity and began to streamline the training process, focusing on increasing the quantity of troops over their quality.
Stalin's "quantity has a quality all its own" approach was now Russia's path forward. If in the 2010s, Russia (mostly unsuccessfully) tried to modernize its armed forces to have better trained and equipped soldiers, it was now reverting back to meat wave warfare.
With Ukraine being drip-fed weapons, troop quality was now far less important for Russia than sheer numbers. Now Russian orphans, psychiatric patients, and convicts would be assaulting Ukrainian defenses.
Russian private military companies like Wagner, recruited mercenaries, especially from the prison system, furthering swelling the ranks of Russian forces in Ukraine to around 500k soldiers.
After the bloody battles of Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and other small towns and villages in eastern Ukraine, Russia began depleting the convict resource, and started searching for other ways to increase the troop count, especially as Ukrainian resistance remained fierce.
Although there is constant speculation that Putin will announce a new mobilization wave, he has so far refrained from doing so, fearing that it could undermine his regime, especially in the wake of Prigozhin's revolt.
Instead, Russia has been quietly recruiting around 30k soldiers/month using a hidden mobilization, that relies on a carrot-and-stick approach. This effort has been sufficient to replace casualties while Ukraine is outgunned, but insufficient to achieve a victory.
Because mass mobilization carries risks, the Putin regime has distributed that risk across regions and institutions in an attempt to redirect any discontent with the Kremlin, which protected by state propaganda, tries to stay above the fray as much as possible.
In the "Good Tsar, bad Boyars" paradigm, local Russian officials do much of the dirty work of recruiting soldiers, while Putin escapes popular wrath. Russian institutions and regions are required to meet mobilization quotas and pay the price whether they fail or succeed.
For example, regional officials offer amnesty to people facing criminal convictions if they sign up to fight in Ukraine. In some cases, the charges may be bogus or motivated by local political or financial disputes, but some prefer fighting in Ukraine for pay to prison.
To meet mobilization quotas, wealthier Russian regions are literally buying people from poorer regions, promising them bigger paychecks if they sign up as recruits from the wealthier regions.
Because the Russian economy is on a war footing, those working in the military industrial complex are exempt from serving in the military, which has incentivized regions and companies to increase the number of (often low-paying) jobs in the military industrial sector.
Recently, the price of recruitment has dramatically increased severalfold across multiple regions. For example, in regions like Krasnodar Krai, authorities are offering recruits staggering $10k/month salaries.
As fewer Russians are willing to risk their lives in Ukraine, the price of recruitment is increasing, tension between regions is growing (especially as places like Chechnya enjoy special protection from the war), and the need for increasingly unpopular measures is evident.
Russia needs a large mobilization wave to achieve any major results, but its resources are not limitless. The idea that Ukrainians will run out of bullets before Russia runs out of people is Kremlin propaganda, which can be easily obliterated by properly arming Ukraine.
