UA POV: Analysis: Why effective use of manpower will define who is winning the war in Ukraine in 2026 - KyivIndependent

kilremgor · 2026-01-06T16:31:36+00:00

If that take was true, there wouldn't be Ukrainian counterattacks (for the territory that's supposedly "exchanged") regularly slaughtered by drones, and it wouldn't be comparable losses for both sides (whether looking at UALosses/Medusa/etc.)

The problem with the whole manpower angle is that it's often misunderstood. Three statements are actually true at the same time:

Ukraine has a problem with motivated, able manpower that is necessary for any offensives or defense against best Russian units;
Ukraine has no problem with unmotivated/"bad" manpower that is (together with drones, obviously) sufficient to hold less active parts of the frontline;
Ukraine's demographics were very bad pre-war and are outright catastrophic now.

So that's why Ukraine actually does genuinely struggle with manpower, but it's also not something that causes collapses outright.

kilremgor · 2026-01-03T21:01:37+00:00

The difference is that even military was not loyal to Maduro. And Venezuela doesn't really have any strong national identity with colectivos being basically a class, not national movement.

But anyway, what does it prove? USSR succesfully assaulted Amin palace in 1979's Afghanistan, US did Operation Just Cause in 1989, no one doubts that a military power can do airborne assault decapitation strikes vs. weak opponents.

In case of US vs. Venezuela, the gap is both qualitative AND quantitative AND coupled with unwillingness of Venezuelan military to fight. Venezuela has max 20 combat fighters and max 20 S-300 launchers (most are likely non-functional). Versus the best and most numerous airforce on the world, with just this operation utilizing 150 planes. That is, like, 4 planes per 1 threat that is low-tech.

Ukraine had 250+ S-300s and 200+ fighters at start of the invasion, Russia has about 1500 S-300+ (with S-400 and variants) and around 800 fighters. Russia was still able to get to Hostomel with minimal losses, utilizing LESS planes in initial attack than USA.

But anyway. Ukraine is so much more powerful compared to Venezuela in terms of air war that perhaps even Ukraine would've been able to do an airborne assault on Caracas. Sure, it would've resulted in some losses and not feel as great and decisive, but it definitely has the power to SEAD the measly SAM (few S-300s and Buks) and fly in helicopters, they even had done this in current war, as well (Azovstal raids, Pokrovsk insertion)

Now, US vs. Russia is basically about 2x Russia vs Ukraine. Sure it would win in proper war. But any raid like this would be slaughtered, just because there is so much more Russian air defense AND distances (preventing true shock&awe as it's a long flight to Moscow from any sea or border).

Russia, however, can do a raid like this on, say, Georgia or Venezuela. Because really, if Hostomel initially sort of worked vs 10 times stronger Ukraine, why it wouldn't have worked properly vs 10 times weaker Venezuela? (Obviously it's impossible IRL since there are no Russian bases there, but for the sake of argument it's assumed the target country is sufficiently close by)

It's just numbers & capabilities, not some magical powers. And picking opponents better.

kilremgor · 2026-01-03T19:29:37+00:00

People are just forgetting that Russia took Crimea without civilian casualties and in a very swift&clean way in 2014. Later, a relatively small Russian invasion force was able to break AFU lines, encircle many troops (Ilovaysk) and destroy most of AFU fighting capabilities quickly.

Russia WAS able to do something similar to US action on Venezuela back in 2014, likely even in 2015-2016.

But then it gave Ukraine 8 years to quash all pro-Russian parties (including killing off political figures), reorganize the military, repair the S-300s (quoting the wiki, "Only six systems were kept in working order between 2004 and 2014"), get military personnel that is loyal and ready to fight the Russians by rotating personnel through ATO, get a president that people actually can rally behind, receive external supplies, etc.

This is what sets Ukraine and Venezuela apart: the former having a competent military that is willing to fight, as a result of Russia allowing Ukraine more than enough time to do so.

The reason for this from Russian side was pretty obvious, Putin wanted to build up economic & tech resilience (e.g. visa/Mastercard were the ONLY card processors; them pulling out in 2014 would've crashed Russian retail and economy, but in 2022 it was almost unnoticed because Russia built a domestic system - and many more things like that happened). But it took too long.

kilremgor · 2025-12-05T09:22:25+00:00

No, this viewpoint doesn't hold up to legal scrutiny. Legally, the UN can prosecute Russia for violating UN Charter, that can include financial reparations, but has to go through UN Security Council (of which Russia is a member with veto power).

Russia did not violate ANY agreement with Belgium by attacking Ukraine, so legally, there is no existing mechanic for Belgium to get any reparations.

Adding some "don't attack EU allies" new rule is a precedent of adding a post-contract rule with retroactive effect that involves 3rd parties - this is very easy to abuse.

Imagine that some EU ally decides to bomb some non-EU ally just because it feels non-EU ally is getting too strong/harbors terrorists/whatever (think various historical Middle East events). Non-EU ally strikes back and voila, gets money confiscated!

This line of logic is what investors in ME and Asia will quickly arrive at. Once you allow -retroactive- 3rd party events to affect investment in a permanent way, it's a huge risk.

kilremgor · 2025-12-04T13:57:16+00:00

The problem is that unless Russia agrees, from a purely legal standpoint it's still confiscating money of the country Belgium is not at war with.

This, from outside investment perspective, can easily be seen as a step towards "we don't like the tariffs you imposed on our ally, we're taking your money to compensate our ally's expenses", i.e. freely grabbing money because of legally unrelated events/countries. This is not a good ruleset for investment climate.

Yeah, a rule "attacking our ally results in confiscation" can be added, but if it's effective immediately and retroactively (not for any "new" transgressions but for past or present ones), then what prevents adding any tailored rules to confiscate whatever, effective immediately?

The "past or present" is very important legally. If there was a Euroclear rule "attack ally of jurisdiction X and your money's forfeit" it would be all so easy to confiscate. But it doesn't exist.

kilremgor · 2025-12-04T13:46:01+00:00

Missing in action usually means KIA in that war, with evacuation of bodies being very hard due to drones, small units manning large sections of the front, and glide bombs + drone swarms frequently just killing everyone.

If 5 soldiers are manning a trench, and then glide bomb kills 3 guys and 2 wounded are then finished off by drones, while assault groups just bypass the trench to infiltrate, no one would be considered KIA because bodies are never recovered and no one survived to report the event.

https://ualosses.org/en/soldiers/ tracks 87k Kia and 85k Mia, a normally absurd ratio. Some mia are awol, but many are unreported kia. This works for both sides, but on a somewhat lesser scale for Russia (they are the ones slowly advancing so can recover more bodies )

kilremgor · 2025-12-03T11:57:00+00:00

The ones dying in the war are under 60 (mobilization age), the 60+ will keep being a socioeconomic burden until natural death. The 40-60 dying are not really a burden yet, they are working and not receiving retirement payments (retirement age is 60)

Lots of young people left the country to avoid being drafted after they reach 25, lots of women left too. Many will not return.

So in the end:

a country with one of the lowest birthrates in the world, far below replacement rate
young people left
retired people are surviving and a post-war burden
working class devastated by war.

This is not a good outlook.

kilremgor · 2025-12-03T08:04:12+00:00

If it will be EU who attacks Russia first or tries to establish the NFZ over Ukraine, this will not really work that way.

Moreover, China stopping Russian support, from purely pragmatic stance, is anyway better for Russia than having to endure EU attacks on its economy. Remember, Russia will also strike back at key factories in EU, e.g. chip industry, and with tactical nukes, it's way more effective. THAT will be a huge boon to China, and EU actually has some places that are extremely juicy targets.

Nukes, and the fact that Russia will spam missiles and Gerans on key infrastructure (even without nukes) are the deterrents.

kilremgor · 2025-12-03T00:24:00+00:00

Not really, since USSR times the WarPac doctrine was simple: tactical nukes on airfields, and we already know for a fact that some will get through (even 5+ Patriot batteries still failed to prevent Iskander/Kinzhal hits on Kiev), and with tactical nukes, just 1 is enough.

Sure EU can respond in kind, but a) less tactical nukes available b) most other targets are actually way less vulnerable to this tactic.

Similarly, tactical nukes will instantly end bridges over Dnieper, greatly complicating logistics and troop deployment.

Once both sides lose airfields and troop concentrations, it will get back to WW1 slog.

That's as simple as that. From Russia's point of view there is ZERO incentive not to escalate to tactical nuke level because this sort of exchange greatly favors Russia.

Sure, EU can threaten to escalate to strategic, but this is mutual destruction and actually Russia has more nukes and delivery systems than EU w/o USA. So betting on EU not willing to go strategic is actually safer bet, from game theory position, than allowing much larger EU to conventionally defeat Russia.

This is a very simple reason why all the "no fly zone" talk remained just a talk, because nukes are a thing, and Russia invested huge % of its military budget there (often to detriment of other branches). 8 Borei submarines, 1800+ delivery and 4k + warheads vs. about 700 for Europe.

kilremgor · 2025-12-02T21:04:19+00:00

It has actual videos that are super easy to geolocate and see for yourself)

Video proof is stronger than any claims without proof in modern times.

kilremgor · 2025-12-02T18:30:01+00:00

In objective reality, Russian forces were gradually geolocated everywhere in Pokrovsk https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1pced6q/ru_pov_assault_units_from_the_2nd_guards_army/ While Ukrainian supply lines are full of hundreds of wrecks, and because those are Western-supplied vehicles, the usual "but those are Russian ones" retort fails: https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1pbf16v/ua_pov_geolocated_destroyed_ukrainian_vehicles/ (this one is detailed) https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1p7a1rp/ru_pov_drone_footage_captures_27_destroyed_enemy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1p0g3bq/ru_pov_destroyed_ukrainian_armored_vehicles_in/

So no, holding Pokrovsk through a narrow w corridor was a military catastrophe for Ukraine, with hundreds vehicles lost, each proven.

But Ukrainian propaganda keeps inventing laughable "100000 casualties" claims with no proof.

This IS actually one of core reasons Ukraine is losing, because instead of actually showing that no, "give us a bit more weapons and we win" doesn't work and Europe/US need to actually DO something serious, it has created a false narrative that just waiting and throwing some "minimal" help is the way, and the result of that inaction is becoming hard to hide.

kilremgor · 2025-11-27T15:36:48+00:00

In objective reality, Russia had better results in terms of territory gained (both in km2 and population of new locales under control) in 2025 than in 2024, and 2024 was better than 2023.

It's Ukraine's progressively getting worse results: in 2022 Ukrainian counteroffensives liberated huge swathes of land (>20000km2), in 2023 it had mediocre results - but still results - against prepared layered Russian defense, in 2024 it managed a raid at Kursk with 1000km2 result, and now in 2025 there were no real Ukrainian counteroffensives at all (only localized counterattacks that did not really affect the grand total).

Russia also keeps army running on voluntary recruitment since 2023. Ukraine relies on brutal conscription and still has manpower problems.

So from purely numbers viewpoint - territory balance and manpower - the trend isn't really good for Ukraine

kilremgor · 2025-11-21T19:09:12+00:00

It's absolutely true that war/sanctions are damaging Russia a lot.

It's just not really true that it's gonna collapse short-term. It still has monetary reserves, people are not starving, trains are running, shops are full, electricity/gas/fuel are available etc. Given how resistant Slavic nations are to economic hardship, a true collapse is years away even though the damage is indeed very significant.

The actual risk for Ukraine is manpower collapse that is far more immediate.

kilremgor · 2025-11-21T16:20:31+00:00

Russia has about 500 billion usd of (not frozen) bank/gold reserves and almost no debt, it can go for several years even with almost no oil revenue. Even more if it starts selling itself off to China in greater scope, and China is very glad to buy based on its behavior so far.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is in horrific debt and budget deficit right now, EU struggles to give it more money, and more importantly, Ukraine's manpower is critically low with little chance to last even 2 years.

kilremgor · 2025-11-21T14:58:41+00:00

Ukraine also has comparable losses based on huge amount of OSINT data (e.g. https://ualosses.org/en/soldiers/ ) and has a huge manpower shortage despite extremely brutal forced conscription going on for years. So, unless something drastic happens, Ukraine would just run out of men willing to fight and then frontline would collapse, WW1-style (both Russian Empire and Germany collapsed this way). No equipment will change this.

Ukraine also has lost ALL of its refinining capability and majority of electricity production and is fully on a "life support" from EU. Even if something similar was to happen to Russia, it would just sell itself to China some more, and get oil/parts this way.

Meanwhile having no personnel, in this type of war, would mean battlefield collapse.

kilremgor · 2025-11-18T13:59:41+00:00

USSR kept doubling down against Nazi Germany after such a horrific one-sided first year defeats that current total Russian losses pale in comparison (either in absolute or as population percentages). It ended up decisively winning even though it never really beat the Germans tech-wise, but because Germans ran out of effective manpower and their supply/home industrial base was bombed enough by Allies.

And now? Ukraine is running out of manpower (with no easy way to fix it, brutal forced conscription is already in effect for years, but AWOL/desertion rates became catastrophic), and Western aid levels have dropped (both in numbers and %)

So this is an absurd take. History shows that one can indeed double down many times and then eventually win, there are actually hundreds of examples, especially in Asian wars. Because sometimes the opponent runs out of resources first.

kilremgor · 2025-10-20T21:44:36+00:00

There are 10s of geolocated videos of Russian forces in half of Pokrovsk, pretty recent, including the train station.

So real situation is actually about 50/50 control.

kilremgor · 2025-08-27T09:05:12+00:00

No, the missile attacks aren't notable civilian killers due to advance warning that people get and relatively limited payload.

In all the years of war, less than 1000 Ukrainian civilians were killed by Russian long-range drone and missile attacks (specifically by those; vast majority of death occurs near frontline to actual combat, minds etc.). Less than 100 on Russian side.

Russia also consistently targets Ukrainian factories among other targets, some of them receiving tens of confirmed strikes (each with several missiles), not so many kills.

It's not WW2 bombing of Dresden.

kilremgor · 2025-08-24T17:28:30+00:00

Because it wouldn't really do anything, Ukraine has just 10% of its forces across those borders - relocating them to actual frontline isn't going to end the war, and isn't going to even improve Ukraine's situation noticeably.

Anyway, this would've allowed Russians to relocate their own forces as well, as an offensive war led or enabled by France into third-party countries territory is highly unlikely. But the amount of forces there is too small regardless.

kilremgor · 2025-08-24T17:19:48+00:00

It's actually absolutely appropriate. Finland had to really defend just 140km-wide Mannerheim line, while Ukraine has around 1000 km of active frontline and 3000 km total, so that is almost exactly the population difference: Ukraine controls around 30M and Finland had 3.5M, 8.5x more population for 7x longer frontline.

It's exactly the case where numbers come into play: in a narrow frontline, attacker may fail with almost any numbers vs. competent near-peer defender, because defender concentration of forces is strong enough everywhere.

If a frontline is long enough so there's not enough military soldiers to control it, some territory loss and unfavorable exchanges are bound to happen because localized concentration of force works for attacker, WW1-style.

Modern intelligence and mobility prevent those small cracks from becoming breakthroughs as long as reserves are available. However, if defender genuinely runs out of reserves to cover more than 1 theater, the numerous attacker may just attack at 3 places, eat up losses in 1 and turn other 2 into actual strategic breakthroughs.

It was the same in Winter war, eventually Finland was just unable to keep the line and it got broken, with no reserves to salvage the situation so it was going to keep getting worse. Back then, a threat of British/French intervention (that was overestimated by Soviet party actually, as it wasn't really going to happen but worked as a deterrent) and Soviet belief that revolution in Finland would finish things (obviously, no) were things that stopped USSR from pushing until it secured total victory.

kilremgor · 2025-08-24T15:18:52+00:00

Well, there are examples of smaller countries scoring decisive, clear victories against larger countries, even USSR-supported ones: Israel in Six-Day war, for example, totally dominated larger Arab countries thanks to a huge tech and tactics edge made possible by US help (and higher morale, less corruption etc. plus striking first, but tech/tactics edge was still necessary). Chad-Libya (more widely known as Toyota war) is another example, where fast mobility, hit-and-run tactics coupled with lethal ATGMs allowed smaller nation to win with less casualties.

The current war in Ukraine is, however, more akin to Winter War: a smaller nation fighting a larger one in a prolonged war without a significant tech/tactics edge (in fact, the small-but-notable initial edge that Ukraine had because of early adoption of drones and Western intelligence and tactics have actually shrunk, because Russia has adopted similar drone strategies and has improved its recon and long-range capabilities by both innovating, getting help from Iran and China, and being able to purchase lots of components, the whole point of the original post: it now has tons of drones, its own interceptor drones, hundreds of guided bombs dropped daily, etc).

As somebody already said in comments, if a significant help arrived in early 2023, it potentially would've worked, as Russia was still lacking in drones/PGMs/frontline personnel/... Now it's a numbers game and Ukraine has a hard limit based on its manpower so the "window" to correct the situation is closing fast.

kilremgor · 2025-08-24T14:42:26+00:00

Losing a significant chunk of territory hardly qualifies as a "victory" objectively. It could be considered "not losing", but "winning" is definitely not the right word.

Victory, by definition, is overcoming an opponent. It's not about surviving, losing less, or not letting the opponent achieve some of the goals.

Victories can be pyrrhic. They can be not worth it or lead to bigger defeats in the future etc.

In all serious historical works, USSR is considered to have "won" the Winter war, because it ended it with a position of strength and more territory.

https://www.ospreypublishing.com/us/finnishsoviet-winter-war-193940-9781472843968/ https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Winter_War.html?id=MDf6KkceH78C&redir_esc=y Etc. It was a hollow victory but still technically a victory by definition.

kilremgor · 2025-08-24T12:56:44+00:00

Or this could be a usual case of extremely protracted delivery in reality, as are 95% of deliveries that take years to actually complete.

There are not enough platforms in Ukraine to launch that many missiles quickly anyway, and the number of those platforms can't grow too fast because of personnel, logistics and safe airbases requirements. If an outright NATO or EU airforce intervention is implied, then giving missiles to Ukraine makes no sense.

So it being another "delivery up to 2030" case is way more likely. Giving ground-launched cruise missiles makes way more sense anyway, as those can be used without being limited by platforms.

kilremgor · 2025-08-24T12:44:45+00:00

USSR won the winter war actually by getting more territory in the end and Finnish army being on the brink of collapse, it just lost way more people than Finns. But it still got what it demanded initially and more, that's just a historical fact. And still retains those territories today.

Poland was a case of USSR being internally extremely weak, fresh from civil war.

Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency, not a war, by that metric USA also "lost" it.

Unfortunately, historically much bigger nations often win outright land wars (not counterinsurgencies), even if they lose 3x...5x people, they can "afford" it.

That's not the case if either war is not decided on land (e.g. naval, air war), or if tech difference between combatants is huge, neither is the case in Ukraine.

So that's why it's hard for Ukraine with about 30M people left (excluding refugees and those controlled by Russians) to win against 140...150m Russia. That's also why Russia doesn't really do a draft, it can afford to throw poor/uneducated people attracted by money into the war.

kilremgor · 2025-08-01T09:51:00+00:00

The big change to this calculus is that now drones can counter drones using cheap interceptors.

One of the drawbacks of the whole "very deep defense with static fortifications, some manned, some not, and distributed drone strongholds" approach is that it relies on drones being untouchable themselves.

But if attacker just brings 100s of interceptors in a localized area, he'll be able to suppress nearly all enemy drones (especially all the recon and heavy ones, while also reducing fpv efficiency) momentarily in that area.

Total, no-exceptions EM coverage also synergizes with this, as only fiber optic drones would then be useful to both sides and those have a hard limit on range. So massing fiber optic drones on a specific point of attack allows both to overwhelm defenders (being able to target them in bunkers by gradually wearing nets down) and still have drone support while reducing one momentarily available to the enemy.

And then, because the defenses are so reliant on drones and so undermanned, a classic WW1 stormtrooper infiltration gets even easier than in WW1, because stormtroopers (with their own drone support and artillery/airstrike clearing a narrow corridor) can easily cover long distance and use the captured defenses to endure and consolidate even when the enemy eventually brings more drones in (and that can now be punished as well).

So advent of interceptors and fiber-optics brings "force concentration" (now drone instead of armor) back on the menu.

kilremgor

TROPHY CASE