Russia's manpower problem in Ukraine

Ukraine's troops have occupied part of Russia since August. Unable to oust them with Russian forces, Putin called Kim Jong Un for help. What does this say about the toll the war has taken on Russia?

In the last two months, Ukraine has taken more territory inside Russian than Russia has taken inside Ukraine in the last year.

And the relatively small Russian advances have been incredibly costly.

The UK Ministry of Defense estimates that Ukraine killed or injured 1,187 Russian troops daily - every day - in August, down from a high in May of 1,262 in May.

The limited Russian advances and the great cost associated with them was illustrated for me in a July trip to Donetsk oblast.

I first went to Kostyantynivka in March 2023 to try to help a hospital there.

As I stepped out of my car, I heard machine gun fire. Explosions don’t bother me much. They could be miles away. But I figure if you can hear machine gun fire, you are too close.

Turns out I was twelve miles from the zero line, the contact line between Ukraine and Russia, in Bakhmut.

I returned to this area last July, sixteen months later. Zero line was six miles closer in Chasiv Yar.

I can run six miles in 75 minutes on a good day.

This particular six mile stretch took the Russians 16 months and cost as much as 138,000 soldiers, or about 14 casualties per yard gained.

Every time the Russians attack a greasy spot in the road in Eastern Ukraine, it makes headlines. But the headlines don’t convey the horrible cost to the Russians.

As many as 728,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, captured or incapacitated in Ukraine since the beginning of the war according to a July article by the Economist citing sources in the US Department of Defense. As of today, the Ukrainians claim to have killed or otherwise taken out of battle 680,230 Russian troops. The lowest estimate I could find was 462,000 Russian troops killed, captured or injured - the low range from the Economist article.

Great graphic from July of 2024 in the Kyiv Post.

At this point, more Russians have died in Ukraine than invaded Ukraine in February of 2024.

Media reports indicated that some 11,000 North Korean soldiers are now in Russia preparing to fight. Twenty-six hundred troops are assigned to stem the first invasion of Russian territory since WWII, Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Oblast in Russia.

Why does Putin feel it necessary to call Kim Jong Un to stop Ukraine’s advances on Russian territory?

Russia has standard conscription orders in the fall and spring of every year. Public records are conflicting, but we can safely say Putin has conscripted at least 600,000 Russians as of September 2024. The Kremlin has promised not to put conscripts into Ukraine, instead recruiting contract soldiers to fight at the front, reserving conscripts to defend the Russian homeland. This strategy has met with limited success. Media reports indicate that hundreds of Russian troops in Kursk surrendered when confronted by battle-hardened Ukrainian troops.

Russia has conscripted some 250,000 to 300,000 soldiers per year for decades. However, off-schedule conscription orders pose a risk for Putin. The special conscription in 2022 yielded 300,000 soldiers, but was wildly unpopular. A million Russians left their country to avoid fighting in Ukraine. The group that fled skewed under 45. Eighty percent had a college education. Russia lost $42 billion as this group took their savings with them, according to the London School of Business.

Most of the troops fighting in Ukraine are contract soldiers fighting for exorbitant amounts of money. LeMonde reports that Russian contract soldiers are receiving $4,219 per month, which is 4.3 times the average wage in Russia and more than twice the wage of an E1, the American entry level military rank. Their signing bonus is is $12,442 - more than a year’s wages in Russia. Finally - and I mean finally - the families of a Russian soldier who dies in Ukraine receive $116,850.

In a country where more than 20% of the population doesn’t have indoor plumbing, that buys a lot of toilets.

Beyond that, Ukrainians hear stories of Russian mothers losing their oldest son, going out and buying a fur coat then taking their next son to the recruiters office.

Thomas Lattanzio and Harry Stevens in War on the Rocks estimate when you add up all the death benefits, payments for dead Russian soldiers total $144,700. Using a conservative estimate of 100,000 Russians killed in Ukraine, they find that 6% of the Russian government budget is going to pay for soldiers who are no longer fighting. This assumes the Russian government will actually pay, and does not include massive healthcare costs for the hundreds of thousands of injured.

I’m not sure what the going rate is for North Korean soldiers, but if Putin is looking for cheaper options than Ukrainian contract soldiers, North Korea is likely the place to find them. If there is a leader in the world who attaches less value to human life than Putin, it is Kim Jong Un.

However, with North Korea edging on famine, it is hard to say how much more effective these troops will be in combat than Russian conscripts. If the quantity of medals earned by generals who have never commanded a combat unit are any indication, the North Koreans could be terrifying.

North Korea is perhaps the only military in the world that has innovated the use of pants for displaying medals.

Overall, the Ukrainian gamble in Kursk seems to be paying off. The Institute for the Study of War reports that elements of five different Russian military units have been pulled from Donbas to fight in Kursk.

On the other hand, the Biden administration’s all consuming fear of escalation has invited exactly that. Ukraine is now fighting two nuclear powers rather than just one.

Editor’s note - We have renamed this publication to “Tales from WWIII” to reflect the global nature of the war we are in. We have kinetic wars in Europe and the Middle East. The rest of us are in an information war. When and if this becomes WWIII depends on the historians. Regardless, we strive to bring you first-hand, data-driven information from Ukraine and well-documented information from other fronts in the global war.

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