They have 39 million people. They barely lost like a million. I am sure they can easily mobilize millions more. Its politically unpopular but not infeasible.
In past wars mobilizing 5-6 million was doable even after losing millions. If its an existential war as Ukraine portrays it, this level of mobilization is nothing.
No they don't. Their paper numbers include people from the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye that are now within Russian lines and even some fighting against Ukraine. A huge amount of the population also fled to other countries as refugees. The GDP of Ukraine fell about a full third from it's prewar levels and is sustained by government spending from donated funds. Meaning the country is no longer self sufficient. On top of that, there are many defections and surrenderees among the ranks. I have seen some numbers, easily in the six digits, but would like to see better sources.
Even during the last days of WW2 Germany and Japan, there were plenty of volunteers, whether they are teenagers, seniors and women. This war has so many precedents in history but there's no precedent in history where a country would literally kidnap its own people off the streets and thrown them into buses.
It's possible that the Russian count of Ukrainian losses might be on the low side. How do you count bodies that were disintegrated by thermobaric attacks that go on daily? There are piles of videos where Russian storm troopers are throwing backpacks full of antitank mines into Ukrainian held bunkers and basements. The explosion would cause the bunker to collapse. Would the Russians even bother to evacuate the bodies? In a warzone? Retrieving bodies on an earthquake zone in peacetime is bothersome enough and requires a major effort.
Then you have FPV drones and ground drones that are flying straight into these bunkers. Boom, collapsing the entrance. Once in a while, the Russians also send a Krasnopol --- laser guided 152mm artillery shell --- right through the bunker entrance. Boom, entrance collapsed. People buried inside. Worst are the FABs that would completely collapse the bunker, especially the FAB-1500s and FAB-3000s. What about the buildings that were leveled by these bombs? Do the Ukrainians bother to remove the bodies from the rubble? It's logical they won't, considering the Russians frequently "double tap" on the same site, targeting rescue crews and equipment.
Another thing. Proper training takes months, not days. You cannot take a person, train them for a week (Russians using Iskanders with cluster munitions now on training sites) then thrown them in the battlefield. Training for drone crews, tank crews, artillery crews, assault troops now on bikes and ATVs, these take even longer. The sharp rise in Ukrainian casualties -- another 1000 Ukrainian bodies to 19 Russian body exchange recently took place -- can be attributed to the poor and inadequate training. This also leads to severe demoralization among the ranks and defections. Russian trainees on the other hand, now train in shooting down drones with small arms, learn to roll on the ground to reduce the effects of a drone blast, and many train to use drones. It doesn't matter what size your population is, it's all about the people you can train.
This also leads to another bottleneck. The trainers. To train people, you need trainers. But the Russians have been sending Iskanders to where the hotels of foreign trainers are staying. They also send Iskanders and Tornado-S with cluster munitions at the Ukrainian training camps. It also doesn't help that foreign trainers are not as battle experienced and are teaching tactics that are obsolete. It also doesn't help that the Ukrainians are concentrating their own experienced troops into quasi elite units, a repeat of the same mistake the Germans did during World War 2. This led to a huge disparity between elite and grunt units, which leads to the grunt or "sacrifice" units suffering high casualties. The Russians rotate their battle hardened veterans into the training camps to pass on their experience to the new soldiers, and veterans are distributed among all units to lead less experienced personnel. The same training scheme all the Allies including the Soviets used during World War 2, this is a proven war winning practice. One of the best things the Russians did was to dissolve the Wagner units and sent the Wagnerians to the training camps and train regular soldiers. So the Russians do not have elite units --- every unit is considered equal. Some units are only more specialized for more specific tasks, like the airborne units, special forces and the marines, but they are not considered superior to the motorized infantry. No elitism, only specialization.
The result of poor training and lack of battle hardened experience being desiminated among new Ukrainian troops leads to serious and fatal mistakes in the battlefield. This leads to further escalating casualties, feeding and feeding this cycle of death. This isn't about manpower, nor boots on the ground but trained boots on the ground, emphasis on trained.
