A lack of manpower has been one of Ukraine’s greatest challenges in the ongoing war against Russia. Now, it’s starting to become a problem for Russia too — and both sides are scrambling to enlist new troops.
It is estimated that over one million people in both Russia and Ukraine have been killed or injured since Moscow started the war in 2022, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal in September. Ukraine has scrambled to bolster its manpower in recent months through heightened conscription and enlistment efforts. And while Russia has a considerably higher amount of fighters than Ukraine, it has started to look to North Korea — a key ally — for troops, raising questions over whether Moscow is becoming more desperate in its effort to topple its adversary.
“For Russia, in recent months, I think they’ve struggled to recruit enough men domestically or through their traditional forms of recruitment,” John Hardie, senior fellow on European affairs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “With the North Korean troops coming in, I think it does suggest Russia’s having a tougher time with recruitment and recruiting enough to replace losses and form new units. So they’re looking elsewhere, and in this case, to North Korea.”
Having already lost an estimated 350,000 troops in battle over the last two years — potentially even up to roughly 600,0000 — Russia has made policy changes and is offering better incentives in a bid to keep its military strong, including lowered recruitment standards and paying higher wages, according to the WSJ and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It has also involved several decrees from Moscow over the last two years to expand Russia’s armed forces.
Even so, Russia’s recruiting efforts are barely keeping pace with the rising combatant death toll, according to CSIS. Russia is bringing on approximately 30,000 new soldiers a month, but the monthly casualty toll is reportedly nearly the same number.
Desiring to expand its military without issuing a second mobilization order for Russian citizens, Moscow is turning to North Korea for help.
“This is an indication that he may be even in more trouble than most people realize. But, again, he went tin cupping early on to get additional weapons and materials from -Russia friendship,” North Korea leader Kim Jong Un told Russian President Vladimir Putin in an early October message, referring to the dictator as his “closest comrade.”
The problem of manpower extends to Ukraine in a far more concerning way, even as Kyiv desperately tries to enlist new troops. Ukraine has a much smaller population than Russia, and years of war have virtually destroyed some Ukrainian units, some of which haven’t been replaced.
A Ukrainian military official told the WSJ this week that the number of soldiers being trained had fallen from 35,000 a month in the spring to 20,000. Ukrainian media outlet Ukrayinska Pravda reported in early October that there had been roughly 18,300 desertion cases since January this year, citing government statistics.
Low morale is starting to grip some troops as the conflict shows no signs of ending, according to CNN.
“They go to the positions once and if they survive, they never return. They either leave their positions, refuse to go into battle, or try to find a way to leave the army,” a Ukrainian battalion commander told CNN in September.
The effort to conscript troops has grown dramatically this year. Draft officers are being posted at various locations throughout Ukraine to stop civilians to see if they’re eligible for service. Officers who previously were only conducting checks in limited locations are now doing so in highly-populated areas and public places, including concert venues, grocery stores and restaurants, according to the WSJ.
That effort has been met with anger from some in Ukraine, as a number of people get into violent confrontations with officers over their refusal to enlist, according to recentreports. This sometimes results in forced mobilization or arrest.
Short of sending Western troops to Ukraine — which has been mused by some European nations but strongly rejected by the U.S. — Kyiv’s manpower problem will likely only get worse. And while Russia may be relying on its ally for help, it has a far bigger domestic military, with roughly 1.3 million troops in active personnel, according to the 2024 Global Firepower Index.
President Joe Biden and U.S. officials have tried to help Ukraine over the last two years — through tens of billions of dollars in military aid or offering a bridge to join the NATO alliance — but it has done little more than to provide Ukraine with temporary defenses. Russia has expended hundreds of thousands of troops to little success, although forces have seized some territory along the eastern front.
With only months left in office, Biden’s options to help Ukraine are running out. It’s highly unlikely he will be able to convince Congress for another large aid package.
“ been a terrifically active foreign policy presidency, in the sense that there’s been a lot of fires burning in various regions of the world that the U.S. has ineffectually managed,” Logan previously told the DCNF. “And the next administration, whether it’s Harris or Trump, is going to have an awful lot of fires to put out.”
The Ukrainian Embassy in the U.S. and the State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
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