In the village of Stepnohirsk, near Zaporizhzhia, an officer from Ukraine’s Ferrata unit recently worked out that a newly mobilised Russian soldier lasts about twelve minutes once thrown into the assault, at a price of five to six thousand dollars in shells and first-person-view drones spent to kill him.
Russian military bloggers, cited by the historian Peter Frankopan in Foreign Policy, put the journey from training ground to death at ten days to three weeks, with survival on the front line now measured in twenty to thirty-five minutes. Frankopan traced the collapse in survival rates to drones, which he named the primary killing machines of the war, and to Western estimates that Russian casualties are running above thirty thousand a month.
The war has run into its fifth year, and the front has barely advanced despite that toll, with Russian forces gaining only fifteen to seventy metres a day in their most prominent offensives, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies found, a pace slower than almost any major campaign of the past century.
If those reports hold true, Vladimir Putin’s planners are betting that a large population can keep refilling the ranks faster than Ukraine’s smaller one can absorb its own losses, deciding the war through whichever side simply outlasts the other, not through ground gained.
Replacing the Fallen
President Vladimir Putin’s wager rests entirely on replacing soldiers faster than the front consumes them. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, known as HUR, estimates that Russia recruits no fewer than four hundred thousand contract soldiers a year, comfortably above its monthly losses of thirty to thirty-five thousand.
Moscow fills those ranks with prisoners, men pressured by unpaid debt, and foreign citizens, a method that avoids a second wave of mobilisation and keeps Moscow and Saint Petersburg largely shielded from grief, while poorer regions and ethnic republics keep supplying a heavier share of the dead.
Total Russian casualties since the war began now stand near one point two million, the CSIS found, a toll heavier than any suffered by a major power since the Second World War.
A Smaller Pool to Draw From
Ukraine cannot draw on a similar supply of replacements. The same research centre puts Ukrainian losses, killed, wounded and missing, at somewhere between five hundred thousand and six hundred thousand, with deaths between one hundred thousand and one hundred and forty thousand, roughly half Russia’s toll.
Mobilisation itself has grown unpopular at home, and reports of resistance toward draft officers have multiplied this year, while cases of absence without leave have climbed across Ukrainian units, far above anything recorded earlier in the war. Kyiv’s smaller population means every depleted brigade is harder to rebuild than its Russian counterpart, and there is no equivalent reserve of prisoners or debtors to call upon.
Closing the Gap With Robotics
Kyiv’s response to fewer soldiers has been to automate. Ukraine has built a sprawling private drone industry over the past two years, fielding tens of thousands of unmanned systems for reconnaissance, strikes and jamming, and offsetting some of its manpower gap without adding to its casualty count.
Some of that expertise has now turned into trade, with Kyiv signing defence cooperation deals with Gulf states keen on drone countermeasures, a rare bright spot for a wartime economy. Even so, drones cannot hold ground on their own, and urban combat still demands soldiers that no robot can replace.
Funding a Longer War
Soldiers and machines both need paying for, and funding remains the other constraint on both sides. Kyiv’s wartime budget already runs well into deficit, leaving Ukraine needing loans and grants from European governments and the IMF to keep paying its soldiers and its industry.
Moscow’s own war economy keeps weakening too, with growth slowing to under 1% last year and manufacturing in decline, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies found. Neither treasury can sustain the present rate of loss indefinitely, and both governments know it.
Who Outlasts Whom
Both wagers turn on which side breaks first, not on any single battle. Vladimir Putin is betting that prisoners, unpaid debt and a large population can keep paying his grim price for every metre of frozen ground.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is betting that drones, foreign loans and Western patience can offset a smaller population for long enough to negotiate from a position of strength.
Diplomatic efforts led by Washington have so far failed to produce a durable ceasefire, leaving both wagers to play out on the battlefield rather than at a negotiating table. Neither wager has proven sound so far, and the soldiers dying in minutes near Stepnohirsk have little say in which one prevails.
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