Since at least the Napoleonic Wars, Russia has consistently relied on its superior size and population to win drawn-out wars of attrition against its enemies and neighbors. Now, in its war against Ukraine, Russia still maintains those advantages, but finds itself up against ferocious Ukrainian defenders funded and equipped in part by major European powers and the United States. Today, both the Russians and the Ukrainians find themselves faced with shortages of healthy, fighting-age men to deploy. NATO recently confirmed that North Korea has deployed at least 10,000 troops to bolster the Russian ranks. South Korea has hinted that it might supply weapons and intelligence officers to Ukraine in response.
Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Leon Aron reviews the data on casualties, conscription and more to assess how Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is faring and what all of this might mean for the future of the war.
The following is an excerpt from the above video:
The Kremlin has also raided prisons. Originally, the inmates were promised presidential pardons after half a year in the trenches, and the recruitment proceeded. Gangbusters, thieves, bandits, murderers, rapists and ritualistic cannibals were signing up en masse to the point where the prison population was reduced by an estimated 58,000 last year, and a number of prisons had to be completely or partially closed.
Yet once the pardons were replaced by probation and the six-month service in Ukraine became an endless deployment, the flow of patriotic criminals began to dry up, no matter how much the wardens pressured the inmates, and so Putin had to turn the Russian military into a mercenary army. The sign-up bonuses, which had been already over twice the average monthly salary, were more than doubled this past summer. But the actual payoffs are much larger, since local authorities are expected by the Kremlin to sweeten the pot. Counting the bonus, a Russian private in Ukraine could earn 3.25 million rubles a year, or over three times the national average. If the U.S. were to adjust its volunteers pay accordingly, a first-year Army soldier would make over $178,000 a year.
Yet even this enormous purse is failing to generate cannon fodder in volumes that the Kremlin deems necessary. And the reason is the astounding casualty rate. An estimated nearly 200,000 Russian soldiers killed, and a total between 462,000 and 728,000 out of action, that is killed or badly wounded, since the beginning of the war in February 2022.
