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It is a life of constant fire. In Ukraine, soldiers have to stay at the front for months. Despite the bloody fighting, the front lines move only slightly. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are currently in a position to make major territorial gains in this winter war. Many parts of the front appear frozen. But the impression is deceptive.

Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a war of attrition for some time. Since neither side can achieve major breakthroughs, the question is who can mobilize more military equipment, more ammunition and more soldiers in the coming months. Ukraine seems to have increasingly bad cards.

At the end of the year there is a lot of discussion in the West about military equipment and ammunition. As Vladimir Putin continues to transition his economy toward war production, US and European Union aid packages are on hold. There is also worrying news for Ukraine’s leaders when it comes to personnel. Mobilization is stagnating and Ukraine is sending more and more older men to the front. How dramatic is the situation?

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Many casualties on both sides

There are no exact figures. Russia and Ukraine keep their own loss figures secret. According to experts, the Russian army has lost significantly more soldiers. British and American intelligence services estimate that more than 300,000 Russian soldiers have now been wounded or killed. The US government said Russia has now lost 87 percent of the ground troops that were on the border when the invasion began in February 2022. These figures are estimates and cannot be verified beyond doubt.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin seems indifferent to the large number of victims. This became especially clear during the fighting for Bakhmut from the fall of 2022. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimated the ratio of killed Ukrainian to Russian soldiers at one in ten.

The figures cannot be verified, but it is certain that the Russian military as an aggressor killed significantly more people in this phase. At the time, Putin needed military success, even though Bakhmut was a desert after the fighting. However, it showed that the Kremlin expects to be able to gather more soldiers than Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia would also be more careful with the lives of its soldiers.

In early December, Putin announced at his annual press conference that he wanted to expand the Russian army by another 170,000 soldiers. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as secret mobilizations took place in Russia throughout the war period.

Ukraine announces recruitment abroad

But Ukraine is also likely to suffer major losses. However, the Ukrainian leaders are less able to afford these failures because they have fewer reserves than the Russian army.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian leadership announced that it needed 450,000 to 500,000 soldiers. That is why Kiev wants to call Ukrainians between the ages of 25 and 60 who have fled abroad. This mobilization will not be easy: a large part of the Ukrainian population voluntarily defends their country against the Russian invaders.

But for those who have already fled, the current war situation and bloody trench warfare are unlikely to be an incentive to volunteer. Ukrainian leaders are now threatening them with sanctions if they do not report to army recruitment centers.

Will Zelensky lower the conscription age?

In terms of personnel, Ukraine is currently facing several problems. On the one hand, the long front lines require more soldiers, which increases the burden on them. There is hardly any rotation anymore, observers on site report. This means that the opportunities for soldiers to take a short holiday from the front to relax after months of combat are becoming increasingly limited.

Another problem is the aging of the Ukrainian army. The average age of soldiers is currently around 43 years. As the war progressed with heavy casualties, increasingly older cohorts were drafted. It is currently prohibited to recruit men under the age of 27 if they have no previous military experience. President Volodymyr Zelenskyj planned to lower the age to 25 years. However, he is still hesitant to sign. He apparently fears the domestic political consequences of this unpopular measure.

It’s a big dilemma. Because without additional reserves, the soldiers at the front cannot be replaced. In contrast, the fighting troops at the front suffer from great fatigue and psychological and emotional exhaustion, which reduces their combat effectiveness. According to the Handelsblatt, this is how Ukrainian parliamentarians describe the current situation.

The commander-in-chief sounds the alarm

According to Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zalushni, there is no personnel problem yet, but he sounded the alarm in early November in an interview with the weekly magazine ‘The Economist’. Ukraine needs to create more reserves because Russia, with its larger population, has three times more personnel capacity, the general said. “The duration of the war, the limited options for rotating soldiers to the front and the legal loopholes that make it easier to avoid mobilization significantly reduce the motivation of civilians to serve in the army.”

It is clear that the Ukrainians do not want to end up as cannon fodder like the Russian soldiers. Some pay the equivalent of 675 euros a month to buy their way out. Others use bribery or feign illness to avoid being drafted. The Ukrainian parliament passed a law in August that significantly reduces the number of medical reasons for disability. But the problem of corruption persists.

Even if the personnel situation for Ukraine is currently not as critical as the shortage of weapons and ammunition, Ukraine cannot put this problem on the back burner. Mobilized forces must first be trained and are not immediately ready for use.

From the start, Western allies made it clear that they would not send their own troops in support. For the Ukrainian leadership, one thing is certain: they are on their own in terms of personnel and have to make do with the soldiers they have. This is already causing major problems.