A former top US military intelligence officer writes in a limited-circulation report: “We don’t know what the real numbers are on either side; casualties don’t really count, remaining soldiers count. This is, I think, the real source of worry for Ukraine. The Ukrainian economics minister noted that Ukraine is short 6 million working age adults. Estimates of the current actual population are around 30 million – or less.
Just before the war started Ukraine had a plan to build an army of 400,000 with an additional 900,000 in reserves, based on a nominal population of 43 million. With a real population of 30 million – 6 million working age adults gone – those numbers become very difficult. Managing an army that constitutes several percentage points of the population is expensive and difficult. And Ukraine has already taken (my numbers) something on the order of 200,000 casualties (50,000 KIA and 150,000 WIA), maybe more.
Said differently, Ukraine may well be running out of people. If Russia has a 100,000 man – fresh – army ready to attack, this would be very difficult for Ukraine to blunt, and virtually impossible to maintain the already slowing offensive.”