Things have been tough for Ukraine so far in this war. The Russians are the ones always attacking, and aside from when Russians actually retreat, Ukraine gains ground slowly only where Russians barely defend, while Russians attack everywhere, and score drip-drip-drip of successes that tend not to be reversed. Most of the media is still gloomy on Ukrainian prospects, yet Kos and other writers here seem positive, even on “Bad news days” where nothing seems to go right for the Ukrainian Armed forces.
What is the source of this optimism? It isn’t actually the fancy new tech coming in from the West, although that is important both for current operations and the future. It’s that if the war goes just the way it has, with Ukraine and Russia both sustaining combat operations just as well as they have, the secret weapon Ukraine has is their pipeline of new recruits. Most of whom are have former military service and many of whom are already combat veterans.
I have made an extremely simple-minded napkin calculation. Rather than burying the lede, here is the meat of it, and how force ratios in simple soldiers looks over the next year. Assuming Ukraine does no better on offense than Russia did in terms of casualties, here is what it looks like.
A ratio of 3 = overwhelming for RFA, a ratio of .33 is overwhelming for UFA. Over 1.0 means RFA is probably on offense, under 1.0 means UFA is probably on offense, casualties reflect that.
Commentary is expanded on with notes below the table, that match the numbers in parentheses
Soldiers deployed to active combat in Ukraine
Month |
RKA |
UFA |
RatiO |
commentary |
Feb 2022 |
190000 |
140000 |
1.4 |
Pre-invasion forces (1) |
May 2022 |
133000 |
121000 |
1.1 |
30% RFA casualties, UKA takes 1/3 of RFA casualties. No reinforcements for either side (2) |
Aug 2022 |
125600 |
207700 |
.6 |
Another 30% RFA casualties with UKA taking 1/3 of RFA casualties. First wave of reinforcements on both sides (3) |
Feb 2023 |
214060 |
623080 |
.3 |
UKA goes on attack takes 60% casualties over 6 months, RFA takes 1/3 of UKA casualties. 2nd wave reinforcements (4) |
Note 1.
Russia is assumed to have invaded with full 190k troops in spite of not being able to deploy conscripts with BTGS. Numbers are filled out with a mix of illegal deployments, conscript volunteers, mercenary and contract troops pulled in from various regions and Ukrainian DPR/LPR separatist forces fighting on their front lines or with Russian offensive troops. UFA was estimated to have about 150k active troops crsreports.congress.gov/ but 10k are held back to train an estimated 140k reservists back into active service. This training is expected to take only 6 months, instead of the usual 9 months because the first wave was prioritized as folks with recent military service, many of whom are veterans. This is the maximum that can be equipped rapidly, even with foreign aid.
Note 2.
By May 9, Russia was reported to have taken roughly 30% casualties (ie be at about 70% prewar strength). As they were the primary attacker in the 3 month period, I take as a basic assumption in this napkin model that whomever has the larger force will be doing most of the attacking and will take about that level of casualties over a 3 month period. The defender is assumed to take roughly a third of whatever casualties the attacker takes. This might be overestimating Ukrainian casualties in this period, but is probably an ok simple approximation as it adds in losses from Ukraine’s own attacks even as the overall weaker army. Russian attempts to move in troops from Syria and Africa pretty much failed, as did getting more volunteers to go into the cauldron (impressing conquered region civilians is treated as part of why they are still at 70% power compared to initial invasion). Ukrainian volunteers are all still in training, no reinforcements yet arriving.
Note 3. Absolute casualties on both sides are down a bit as force levels are lower than in Feb for both sides during this 3 month period, as Russia gets whatever it can on offense. I assume they’re more effective at getting some reinforcements into the region, achieving maybe ¼ of the Spring conscript class deployed (either by signing some up as conscripts, replacing garrison troop contract soldiers with new conscripts or just finishing the deployment of 20k Syrian troops or whatever). This amounts to somewhat over 30k troops which doesn’t quite keep up with casualties. Ukraine by contrast graduates its first wave of volunteers and they flood in. I assume they can’t actually train 1 million troops by the 2nd wave, that the best that is practical is doubling the August ready troops in another 6 month wave, which requires 4x the trainiers. So 30k veterans are removed from the totals while 140k trained and equipped recruits enter the battle. Suddenly force levels are in Ukraine’s favor (at about 1.7 vs the 1.4 Russia had at the start of the war). So we assume Ukraine goes on the attack basically everywhere, the way Russia has in the first months). The new huge wave of recruits is only expected to take 6 months to train, as all of them have spent the last 6 months at least getting some basic training if they have no prior service (mostly women and teenagers) or brushing rust off old skills in territorial reserves or similar if they had prior service. Some of this time is required just to equip them.
Note 4.
If Russia is still in Ukraine by Feb 2023, it has been brutal for both sides. If neither side added replacements both are down to less than 90k troops. In this situation I assume Putin manages to somehow deploy the entire fall class of conscripts (135kish troops) via some political means, either an actual war declaration or just a law that sends that class in, as a one-off. Meanwhile the Ukraine 540k finish training. I assume they actually ramp down to a class of only 260k as both volunteers and material are going to be more scarce, so half of the veterans serving as trainers can return to the front (another 20k). At this point Ukraine has overwhelming numerical advantage, with 3-1 troop edge on the entire theatre, not just wherever they are trying to attack.
Caveats
It is possible Ukraine and/or Russia can’t sustain this conflict as it has existed in the first 3 months, for political or logistics or economic reasons. For now though we assume both have the will to fight and ability to sustain it for a full year, regardless of casualties or costs. Both sides have serious economic risks, political risks etc that are hard to measure but could disrupt warfighting capability or ability to reinforce the theatre. I ignore all that, setting terms of reinforcements based on fairly optimistic assumptions for Russia, and Ukraine’s stated goals (limited by being skeptical at being able to both train and equip a force more than double the existing army’s size in 6 months, no matter how good you are at logistics and training).
I am assuming Ukraine is basically as inept on offense as Russia has seemed to be. There are a lot of differences in their force structures and doctrine, but I am assuming in this napkin drawing that they get similar outcomes for different reasons. Eg, Russia takes heavy casualties on offense because they can’t seem to manage combined arms, have logistics issues and can’t seem to concentrate forces. I assume Ukraine will take similar heavy casualties on offense because Russia is actually objectively superior to them in Naval, Air and Artillery force levels per soldier, and that will cause some massive casualty failures along with whatever lower casualty successes they have through better coordination, combined arms and concentration of force.
Even with fairly optimistic assumptions for Russian reinforcement and pessimistic assumptions for Ukraine’s offense when they get the numbers, you can see from the above simple calculation why Ukraine officials are muttering about “we’ll go on serious offense around August” and why Russian pundits worry about a “million volunteers trained and deployed next year”.