A special series by defense journalist David Axe, exploring how Ukraine can win the war:
- How Ukraine can win, p.1. Swarms of dirt-cheap drones decimate Putin’s armor
- How Ukraine can win, p.2: The single drone target that could cripple Russia’s oil empire
- How Ukraine can win, p.3: The only counteroffensive strategy that could break Russian lines
- How Ukraine can win, p.4: Just repeat what Putin says
By 10 June, the 1,203rd day of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, 999,200 Russians had been killed or wounded in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv.
So when a Russian assault group, possibly from the 3rd Combined Arms Army, attacked toward the town of Siversk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast on June 10 or 11, it had the potential to achieve a deeply tragic symbolism.
For months, the Russians had been losing more than 1,000 people a day all along the 1,100-kilometer front line of the wider war. The math was sound: the Siversk assault had a chance to produce the millionth Russian casualty.
Sure enough, the assault group—three up-armored infantry fighting vehicles led by an up-armored tank—ran afoul of missiles, drones, and artillery from the Ukrainian 4th National Guard Brigade. More than a dozen Russian troops leaped off their damaged vehicles, only to come under fire from more drones and artillery.
As the smoke cleared, it’s possible the millionth Russian casualty lay on that shell-pocked field outside Siversk.
Incredibly, it meant almost nothing.
How Russia sustains massive losses while growing its army
Yes, a million casualties are a lot of casualties for a military that, before February 2022, had just 900,000 active troops on its rolls.
No, a million casualties isn’t too many casualties for the wartime Russian armed forces—not under current economic and political conditions. Incredibly, the Kremlin is still recruiting more fresh troops every month than it buries or sends to the hospital.
The Russian military is growing even as it suffers what would, for practically any other military, be catastrophic losses.
And that, more than any other trend, explains why Russia can keep fighting even as its original war aims—regime change in Kyiv and the total disarmament of the Ukrainian state—slip farther out of reach.
How the Russian regime has sustained a mobilization campaign—one that can only be described as wildly successful—not only speaks to the regime’s theory of victory; it also hints at a possible theory of defeat.
If recruiting is how Russia wins, a collapse in recruiting could be one way it loses.
Even losing almost all of its pre-war armored vehicles and most of its stored Cold War vehicles isn’t fatal for the Kremlin; its planners have rewritten ground warfare doctrine to accommodate troops riding in civilian cars, trucks, all-terrain vehicles, and even motorcycles and electric scooters.
Russian commanders no longer orchestrate sophisticated attacks involving mutually-supporting tanks, fighting vehicles, and artillery. Instead, they just hurl bodies at Ukrainian defenses until some of those bodies fall into cracks in the defenses.
Then, the Russian commanders surge more bodies—along with whatever few armored vehicles they can scrounge.
If recruiting is how Russia wins, a collapse in recruiting could be one way it loses.
It’s a manpower-first approach to warfare for an army whose last remaining strength is its abundance of men. Seemingly against the odds, the Kremlin has been able to motivate more than a million men to sign up to fight in a war that’s been killing their countrymen at a rate of 30,000 a month.
Russia’s 600,000-strong force: bigger than the invasion army
Ukraine sprawls across 603,470 km2, less than 20% of which is under Russian occupation. At the current rates of advance and loss, the Russians would capture the rest of Ukraine in the 2250s at the cost of more than 100 million casualties. For context, the current population of Russia is 144 million.
Incredibly, the slow pace of Russian advance and staggering losses in people and equipment—the Russians have lost around 20,000 armored vehicles and other heavy equipment—haven’t yet crippled the Russian army in Ukraine. The Kremlin is equipping its forces with thousands of civilian vehicles, including scooters, compact cars, and even at least one old bus.
Meanwhile, it’s recruiting no fewer than 30,000 troops per month, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the commander of US Army forces in Europe, told American lawmakers in early April. Since many of the wounded eventually return to the front line, the Russian armed forces ultimately add more people every month than they lose.
As a result, the Russian force in Ukraine is actually growing, Cavoli said. It now numbers around 600,000 troops, “the highest level over the course of the war and almost double the size of the initial invasion force” in February 2022, according to Cavoli.
Good vibes at the massacre
The Kremlin’s recruiting strategy comes down to two things: money and mood. Record enlistments are “driven by high sign-on bonuses and speculation that the war will soon be over,” explained Janis Kluge, the deputy head of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
“Recruitment is driven by huge payouts—sums of money most Russians have never seen in their lives,” pointed out Artur Rehi, an Estonian analyst who has assisted Ukrainian forces on a volunteer basis.
Last year, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin boosted the baseline enlistment bonus to 400,000 rubles ($5,100), which is 10 months of income for the median Russian. The average bonus is much higher: 1.4 million rubles ($17,800). That’s nearly three years of income for many Russians.
Enlistment bonuses cost Russia more than $8 billion a year—0.4% of the Russian economy, worth just $2 trillion annually.
If the United States spent the same proportion of its national wealth on enlistment bonuses that Russia does, it’d shell out no less than $112 billion. That’s more than 10% of America’s annual defense budget.
No one knows for sure how long the money and good vibes are sustainable in Russia. But there’s no denying Russia’s war economy is hot—and perilously close to overheating.
“All told, Russia’s defense budget will account for 40% of all government expenditures, which is at its highest level since the Cold War,” Cavoli noted.
By comparison, the United States spends 13% of its budget on defense. “The Russian economy is on a war footing and will remain so for the foreseeable future,” Cavoli said.
Lavish government spending in Russia doesn’t just pay for enlistment bonuses. It also pays for the weapons contracts that sustain millions of jobs. These abundant jobs have buoyed Russian civilians’ attitude toward the war, even as casualties pile up.
“As a direct result of its defense spending, Russian investments in its industrial base have reduced national unemployment to 2.4%,” Cavoli said.
Economic tightrope as Russia’s defense spending reaches 40%
But a war footing isn’t always efficient as more and more cash gets spent on munitions that get expended and vehicles that get blown up.
“As federal funds are spent on war and the military, fewer funds are available for other types of federal spending and investments,” explained the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in Rhode Island.
“The foregone opportunities involve ‘opportunity costs,’ including the lost opportunities to invest in other areas that are important to societal health, well-being, productivity, and the environment. … One of the most significant opportunity costs of military spending is in job creation. Research has consistently shown that dollar for dollar, the military produces fewer jobs than education, health, infrastructure, or clean energy.”
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has vowed to maintain the elevated military spending even as erratic oil prices and the damage from Ukrainian drone attacks squeeze revenue from energy exports, cutting economic growth in Russia by more than half compared to a year ago.
To prolong the wartime spending spree, Putin raised personal and corporate taxes last year.
“Russia’s leadership is not only prepared to increase the tax burden on Russians but is also shifting its economic development priorities,” explained Alexander Kolyandr, an analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C.
Obviously, war industries are one priority. Enlistment bonuses are another. Moscow must pay for both to keep the vibes positive.
If the money runs out, the mood among everyday Russians might sour—and the strong recruitment the Kremlin counts on to sustain its war effort in Ukraine could collapse.
Losing a lot to gain very little in Ukraine and sustaining the costly effort through massive spending, Russian leaders are walking an economic and political tightrope.
The demographic math: 19 million vs 5 million military-age males
Losing a lot to gain very little in Ukraine and prolonging the costly effort through massive spending, Russian leaders are walking an economic and political tightrope.
But not a demographic tightrope. If the wartime economy overheats—perhaps due to rising borrowing costs and runaway inflation—it may become harder to sustain the current high level of monthly recruitment. It would be even harder if the bonuses needed to be bigger to keep up the current enlistment numbers.
Russia should ideally suffer from a loss ratio closer to 1:3; the current is 1:1.87.
Frontelligence Insight
Any collapse in military manpower won’t be the result of an actual shortage of men, however.
There are roughly 19 million males between the ages of 20 and 39 in Russia, and fewer than five million men in the same age range in Ukraine.
Russia can afford to lose three or four times as many troops as Ukraine loses. In fact, it’s barely losing twice as many.
“The total number of permanently lost personnel is estimated at approximately 560,000 for Russia and 300,000 for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian Frontelligence Insight analysis group concluded in March. “This results in an approximate loss ratio of 1:1.87 for irreversible manpower losses.”
“While these numbers may seem favorable for Ukraine, it suffers from a smaller mobilization base and weaker mobilization,” Frontelligence Insight added. “Russia, with a population at least three times larger and a more effective recruitment system, should ideally suffer from a loss ratio closer to 1:3.”
“From a strictly manpower and force generation perspective,” Frontelligence Insight concluded, “our team has a negative outlook for Ukraine.”
An influx of 80,000 trained infantry “could transform Ukraine’s front-line situation,” according to Frontelligence Insight. But Ukraine’s rickety mobilization system—prone to corruption and reliant on an unpopular draft—struggles to generate those 80,000 fresh recruits.
Russia may not run out of troops, but it may run out of volunteers
Realistically, Ukraine could run out of troops. Russia probably won’t. That, more than any other reason, is why Russian leaders aren’t deterred by the loss of a million men.
Maybe they should be. Yes, Russia has plenty of people. No, the Kremlin can’t assume their willingness to volunteer is unwavering. More Russian soldiers are discovering the hard way that their enlistment contracts are essentially indefinite.
“You can only get discharged now if you’re missing both arms, both legs, or simply don’t have a head,” one former Russian soldier told Bereg, a collective of independent Russian journalists.
“Trying to get discharged legally is simply pointless,” another former Russian solider, a deserter, told Bereg. “This is a real war, and no one’s allowed to leave. And I don’t want to fight.”
“It may seem like Russia has an endless supply” of manpower, Rehi wrote, “but that’s not the case.”
The supply of people is as much about sentiment as it is the sheer availability of bodies. Rehi, for one, already senses the sentiment in Russia turning against the war. “The incentives are losing effectiveness, and fear of the front is growing,” Rehi claimed.
Russia could widen its annual conscription and change its policy against sending conscripts to the front line. It could, in other words, begin drafting front-line troops the way Ukraine does.
To understand how unpopular and destabilizing that would be for Russia, look to Ukraine. No, the Kremlin wants volunteers. It’s willing—and, for now, able—to pay for them.
How long that lasts could determine how long the war lasts.
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