by Mark Sleboda
As in any conflict, it is crucial to look at manpower and troop numbers to understand the dynamics of the conflict in Ukraine
The Kiev regime started the conflict in February of 2022 with approximately 250,000 strong active duty armed forces, most of them conscripts.
This was supplemented with a 60,000 strong National Guard (with many Azov NeoNazis among its ranks), 50,000 border troops, and about another 50,000 in the 50 or so discrete far right battalions.
Though the Kiev regime’s initial military forces have since been badly mauled with the Russian MoD claiming to have inflicted an excess of 100, 000 casualties — through volunteers, territorial defense (now regularly thrown as cannon fodder into the front), several thousand foreign mercenaries, and a regime policy of mass forced conscription in some 7 waves thus far, with male citizens forbidden from leaving the country, the Kiev regime has substantially increased their military manpower since the Russian intervention began.
They claim to now have a total of a million total troops under arms defending the regime, though realistically it is probably more like 700,000 total, though many have next to no training or previous military experience.
It seems that this is about the maximum number that the regime and its Western patrons can economically and logistically support at one time.
The Russian intervention force meanwhile has until now been self-limited by the terms of the “Special Military Operation” that the Kremlin dictated to just some 150,000 active duty professional and contracted Russian military troops.
And it has not since risen substantially above this number, though casualties have been replenished. This has been supplemented by some 40-50 thousand former east Ukrainian Donbass militia, a couple thousand Chechen Rosgvardia National Guard, and a couple thousand Wagner security contractors.