The Erosion of Russian Manpower: Can Ukraine Outlast Her Invader?

As Ukraine moves into the latter half of 2025, the question of manpower has become central to strategic thinking on both sides of the war. While Russia retains significant advantages in population size, her ability to convert that demographic depth into sustained, effective military presence is increasingly questionable. Conversely Ukraine, despite suffering from population displacement and battlefield casualties, continues to maintain a coherent and increasingly professional force, bolstered by strong morale, Western training, and technological adaptation. The war, in many respects, is now a race of exhaustion: can Ukraine hold the line long enough for Russian manpower and political will to run dry?

The Scale of Russian Losses

Reliable estimates of Russian casualties remain contested, but most independent military analysts place confirmed Russian military deaths at well over 300,000 since February 2022, with total casualties—combining wounded, missing, and incapacitated—possibly exceeding 1 million. The bloodiest months of the war have occurred in 2024 and 2025, particularly around Avdiivka, Chasiv Yar, and the Zaporizhzhia front. These losses have disproportionately affected Russia’s most combat-capable infantry and disproportionately drawn from ethnic minorities and poorer rural oblasts. The political cost of casualties in regions like Dagestan, Buryatia, and even parts of central Russia has led to sporadic protests, desertions, and rising evasion of military service.

The Kremlin has relied increasingly on coercion, inducements, and informal mechanisms—recruiting prisoners, undocumented migrants and economically desperate men. Chechnya, under Ramzan Kadyrov, has reportedly been granted permission to exempt many of her own from front-line service, using instead loyalist militias primarily for internal repression or rear-guard operations. Such exemptions, and the expanding use of convict battalions, raise doubts about the long-term cohesion of the Russian Armed Forces as an institution.

Mobilisation Fatigue and Demographic Limits

The demographics of the Russian Federation offer diminishing returns. Russia’s birth rate has collapsed to historic lows, with fewer than 1.3 children per woman. The cohort of men aged 18–30 is shrinking year by year. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of potential conscripts have fled abroad or gone into hiding. The 2022–2023 exodus of young Russian men to countries like Georgia, Kazakhstan and Serbia has permanently reduced Moscow’s manpower pool.

Although Russia has not yet declared full wartime mobilisation, successive waves of “partial” call-ups have deeply affected civilian life. The fear of conscription, particularly in urban centres like Moscow and St Petersburg, has reshaped social behaviours and undermined domestic trust in state institutions. Russian authorities have responded by intensifying propaganda and surveillance, but this cannot indefinitely suppress the underlying demographic and psychological fatigue.

Ukraine’s Adaptive Advantage

Ukraine, for her part, has faced enormous challenges in sustaining troop numbers. Many of her best-trained troops from the early stages of the war have been killed or wounded. The 2024 decision to lower the mobilisation age and accelerate training cycles was met with resistance in parts of the country. But the state has gradually adapted: local military enlistment offices are now better regulated, mobilisation campaigns are more transparent, and battlefield rotations have been improved to prevent burnout.

Perhaps most significantly, Ukraine has transitioned towards a smaller, smarter, and more lethal army. The increasing use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), electronic warfare systems and precision strike capabilities has allowed Ukraine to inflict disproportionate casualties on Russian troops while preserving her own forces. Territorial defence units and volunteer formations are increasingly integrated into the formal Armed Forces structure, allowing for greater resilience at the local level.

Morale remains a critical differentiator. Ukrainian troops know why they are fighting. The war is existential, and every metre of defended territory matters. Russian conscripts, by contrast, are increasingly aware that they are being used as expendable resources in a campaign with unclear objectives and vague rewards.

The Role of Foreign Support

Western military and financial support remains essential for Ukraine’s endurance. The rearmament of Europe and the reorganisation of Western defence production—led by countries such as Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom—is gradually allowing Ukraine to plan for sustained defensive operations. Even if the United States reduces her support under a Trump administration (and it is far from clear that she will despite periodic misleading messaging from the Pentagon), European production of artillery shells, air defence missiles and armoured vehicles is projected to meet Ukrainian needs by early 2026.

Russia, meanwhile, is turning to partners such as North Korea and Iran for artillery shells, drones, and small arms—often of poor quality. The Russian defence industry continues to function but is hampered by sanctions, internal corruption and a severe shortage of skilled labour. Moscow’s capacity to maintain a high-intensity war indefinitely is not assured.

A War of Time and Will

Ultimately, the question is not merely whether Ukraine can match Russian manpower numerically. She cannot. But if she can continue to degrade the quality, cohesion and morale of Russian forces faster than the Kremlin can regenerate them—through smart use of technology, better tactics and sustained morale—then the war tips in her favour.

The key lies in endurance: holding the line, buying time, and wearing down the invader’s capacity to regenerate. Russia’s campaign has already become one of strategic exhaustion. If Ukraine, with continued Western support and national resilience, can outlast this phase of attrition, she may find herself not only surviving but poised to push back decisively when Russia’s manpower—and her will—finally cracks.