Kiev and Moscow Recruitment Numbers Spell Great News for the Slavgrinder

Correlation of forces is what matters in this (and any) war. In early fall 2022 it came to where Ukraine had 450,000 men deployed, and the Russian side had 220,000 (a third of whom were Donbass rebels) and we saw the result of that — Russia lost 10,000 km2 in Kharkov inside a week, and was forced to withdraw from Kherson city 40 days after declaring its annexation to the Russian Federation.

The real war isn’t the battlefield. The real war is the force generation side. Battlefield fortunes are downstream of the real warfighting — the army-building race. Territorial changes can be interesting to follow, but only as clues to help divine the underlying correlation of forces.

No need for such indirect methods today, however, because for once we have real news, on the real war.

The first news is that we have independent verification that Russia has continued to very nearly meet its target of 30,000 new recruits monthly, having recruited 166,000 volunteers in H1 2024. (That works out to 28,000 monthly.)

Sign-on bonuses keep having to be raised, but once they are, more are found to take the bait.

The record sign-on bonus on offer now is 2.75 million rubles ($28,000)

Ukraine’s Hromadske meanwhile reports the number of recruits receiving basic training at any one time in Ukraine has declined 40% from 35,000 just a few months ago.

35,000 is probably how many were training just after the new mobilization law came into effect on May 18. That in just five months of mobilization the stream has already shrunk to 21,000 is worrying for Kiev, there is no way around that.

At the same time, we have to know that in Ukraine basic training lasts 1 month. Further training of up to 2 months is received when recruits advance to their unit if possible. (This is not dissimilar to Russia.)

This means that since the mobilization law Ukraine’s basic training camps have had the time to train at least 4, but probably 5 classes, of 35,000-21,000 recruits each, and are now training a 6th (or 5th) class of 21,000. That’s not counting tens of thousands who are receiving their training abroad.

In other words, this news also tells us that the first 6 months of Ukrainian mobilization efforts have netted between 140,000 and 168,000 recruits training at home, plus tens of thousands training abroad.

So then, in the six months from June through November, Russia and Ukraine will have generated about an equal number of troops! What splendid news for the god of war!

My best guess is that presently Moscow has a significant, but non-decisive advantage over Kiev in the theater, fielding 550,000 troops to Ukraine’s 420,000.

The news we just covered tells us that for a while longer that advantage will not budge, and will remain non-decisive.

Then, if current trends hold, Russia will be adding ~30,000 monthly and Ukraine ~20,000, meaning the disparity in forces will be oh so slightly growing.

Why should a 150-million Russia 3 years into a war be army-building only slightly faster than a 30-million Ukraine? I don’t know, but it sure is good for the Slavgrinder.