Ukraine does not have enough soldiers to stop Russia
Ukraine does not have enough soldiers to stop Russia
Ukrainian military personnel on the Kurakhove front report that troop numbers have been drastically reduced — a setback more severe than the pressing need for additional weapons
I don't quite understand the downvotes. Ukraine needs more soldiers, doesn't it? Russia has no regulations whom to send in battle and how many. Ignoring the problem does not make it better.
People don’t want to hear that Ukraine will lose with the current level of support. Trinkets in the form of fancy weapons every couple of months do not win attritional war fought with men and artillery.
Not only Ukraine, Russia is also hurting badly for new recruits. The people on the front for Russia come mostly from impoverished rural areas and they're running out of cannon fodder from the farms. Ukraine is racking up the body count, sometimes thousands per day.
After putin's last "reelection" he refused to expand his mobilization as he doesn't want to dip into the urban centers around St. Pete and Moscow. Putin is a maniac but he understands his support lies with his oligarchs and is centered mostly in urban areas. If he starts pulling people from the street in Moscow and St. Petersburg his support will errode and his power will be compromised.
Putin is a coward. He doesn't want to get pushed out a window himself so he needs to keep his rich patrons relatively happy. Conscripting the urban elite doesn't align with his strategy, risks compromising his support, and could ultimately lead to his downfall.
That said even the urban elite are growing suspicious of the regime. Drone attacks in your capital will do that to you. Some of his mercenary units have also started showing signs of discontent. Puttie is walking a thin line and is in desperate need of new recruits as the recent news from DPRK highlights. Hopefully this thin line leads to his death, very soon.
This is not Hearts of Iron IV or something alike. The pure size of an army or population is not a relevant stat when trying to predict the outcome of a war. Superiority of equipment, training, strategies, logistics, supplies etc are all far more decisive.
That it's not a video game means also that you can't so easily refute the entire thesis and approach of the linked article by appealing to some kind of simplistic ideal model of warfare where morale and recruitment do not matter at all to an army. Conscripting the unwilling has its costs, and here we have one attempt to describe how some of it is playing out on the Ukrainian side.
Don't judge things just from the headlines, lemmy. It's a bad habit. This reporting is credible enough, and El País a sufficiently respectable publication, that it deserves better than that.
My downvote is for the "accept cookies or subscribe" link
Yup, hopefully the programs to recruit from the pools of refugees throughout Europe actually take off. Train them well, arm them well and send them to Ukraine. Because they need the men.
sorry, what? I never heard of programs recruiting refugees in Europe for the war in Ukraine, do you have a source for that?
Edit: or do you mean Ukrainian refugees?
Yikes. Forcing people who flee war/crime/poverty and are likely traumatized into battlefield is some inhumane crap.Noone said forcing... Yeez.
The Polish government inventoried why these people chose to flee instead of fight. And a common answer was they did not want to be put on the front with 2 weeks of training and no equipment. Which seems fair.
So they asked follow up question, if we train you properly and equip you properly, would you volunteer to fight.. and a lot of people said yes..
The first battalion was filled in hours after opening signups. Edit: https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-begins-training-of-ukrainian-brigade-of-enlisted-volunteers-foreign-minister-said/
Polish one is going quite miserably.
Forcing someone who fled the war to fighting in it only works if you do sowjet style "retreaters get executed".