Inside Ukraine's Growing Manpower Crisis. And More.

Name: Inside Ukraine's Growing Manpower Crisis. And More.
Uploaded: 2026-02-20
Description: Situation Room 13.10.2025: AMA. (INTRO) Welcome back to the Situation Room, the weekly show where your anxious questions and our anxiety-inducing answers c

Situation Room 13.10.2025: AMA. (INTRO) Welcome back to the Situation Room, the weekly show where your anxious questions and our anxiety-inducing answers combine to give a pretty good overview of how the world is utterly f—ked. I’m Simon Whistler, and this week, we’re doing a deep dive into Ukraine’s growing manpower problems - what it means for Kyiv to be struggling so badly with recruitment, and what it means for Moscow to still be failing to make a breakthrough against an opponent with a serious shortage of infantry.

Key Developments

Aside from that, we’ve got an update on Myanmar’s civil war, an analysis of the future of drone warfare, plus some other, shorter answers about various war-related stuff. As always, timestamps below, and now let’s get into our longest segment of the week: Ukraine’s manpower crisis. (TITLE): Ukraine’s Growing Manpower Crisis Here’s the question, from @Parker-K1m4h: “Can you talk about the massive desertion problem and forced conscription by Ukraine and how it affects their ability to fight?”

Now, some of you watching may already be rolling your eyes at this question. Some of you may even be screaming at your phone, “Goddamnit Simon, why are you giving airtime to a pro-Russian talking point?!” The answer is simple: we’re giving it airtime because /it really is a massive f–king deal/.

Key Takeaways

Ukraine’s military is in a deep manpower crisis, with battalion commanders reporting fewer than ten combat-effective infantrymen in some units and over 110,000 troops having left their posts without leave in just seven months of 2025.
Emeritus Professor Lawrence Freedman estimates Ukraine is short of roughly 100,000 troops, a figure consistent with official desertion statistics reported by Ukrainska Pravda.
Russia faces its own desertion problem but is more effective at returning troops to the front, and its forces are growing by around 9,000 soldiers per month according to Ukraine’s own Commander-in-Chief.
The Kursk operation worsened the manpower shortage by pulling troops away from critical frontline positions like Pokrovsk in the Donbas, and Ukraine remains in a perpetual fire-brigade posture ever since.
Ukrainian commanders increasingly rely on drones and artillery to do the killing rather than direct infantry engagement, reflecting both tactical adaptation and the shortage of willing frontline soldiers.

And if you’re someone who desperately hopes Ukraine prevails against Putin’s imperial war of conquest, then this is a conversation you need to be paying attention to. Ever since the failed 2023 counteroffensive, Ukraine has been beset by manpower problems. (TITLE): Myanmar’s Civil War @SocialistRepublicofVietnam1500 asks: “Can you make an update on how the Myanmar civil war has progressed since the earthquake earlier this year?

Then, a closely related question from @EnderJacket6384 “What impact will counter drone systems have on the future of warfare?

Strategic Implications

If you’ve been following this channel a while, you may remember that one of our key criticisms of the Kursk operation was that it took badly-needed troops away from frontline positions, like Pokrovsk in the Donbas, where they were arguably needed more. Since the end of the Kursk adventure, those problems haven’t gone away. If anything, they’re now more extreme than ever.

Here’s how the Kyiv Independent wrote about things last month: “As Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine enters its fourth fall season, Ukraine’s military is gripped by a deep manpower crisis, most acute in the ranks of its infantry.” The same report included interviews with battalion commanders who reported sometimes having fewer than ten combat-effective infantrymen in their entire battalion. Drivers, they had.

Drone pilots, sure. As one frontline soldier told the Kyiv Independent: “In 2025, many of those arriving are what we call ‘bussified’ (forcibly taken away in buses by recruitment officers) — they lack the will to fight, they have no purpose.” Before the Russian bots start flooding the comments with laughing face emojis, we need to point out again that such problems are affecting both sides in the war.

Next up, one from @DocKildare, whose use of three question marks in a row suggests they may have been typing this while screaming in frustration: I have always been mystified why the western powers (particularly US) continue to rush announcements out the door about their new military hardware, new capabilities, policies, etc.

Watch on WarFronts

Watch the full video analysis on the WarFronts YouTube channel, presented by Simon Whistler.

Risk and Uncertainty

But guys who could physically hold a position on the frontlines? They were in short supply. The Kyiv Independent are not the only ones to make this point.

On his substack, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, Lawrence Freedman, has estimated that “Ukraine is short of about 100,000 troops”. That’s a number that lines up quite neatly with known statistics on desertions. Ukrainska Pravda got hold of files from the Prosecutor General’s Office that show over 110,000 troops left their posts without leave between January and July of this year.

If someone corners me in an alleyway and tries to rob me, but I reveal that I’m carrying a big, heavy stick, they still don’t know how I’m going to use that stick, but they know that they’d really rather not find out. Now, you, dear DocKildare, mentioned in your question, quote: “I thought the most powerful deterrent was maintaining tension and uncertainty in your enemy’s mind”, and that’s true…but only to a point. Listening to the lyrics “Politicians hide themselves away / They only started the war / Why should they go out to fight?

A recent Atlantic article spoke to Ukrainian commanders who said their current goal is to avoid a situation whereby their infantry ever encounter a Russian soldier, instead preferring to have the men hold a position while drones and artillery do the killing.

Outlook

While a significant minority of those later returned under the amnesty for desertions, the statistics show that this is still clearly a major problem. Of course, it’s not a problem Kyiv is suffering in isolation. Russian forces are also going AWOL at alarming rates.

But it does seem that things are particularly acute on the Ukrainian side. Here’s how the founder of Frontelligence Insight - a group tracking the Ukraine War - recently put it on X: “As our team’s investigation into desertions shows, Russian troops are abandoning their posts at increasingly growing rate. Yet desertions still remain more frequent on the Ukrainian side, and Moscow is more effective at returning its troops to the front.”

Just in case you’re tempted to write this off as the work of a deep undercover Russian agent, the Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, himself noted in August that Moscow is successfully mobilizing so many men that its forces are actually growing by about 9,000 troops a month. Of course, good old-fashioned projectile interceptors still do the job just fine, with cheap, easily transported, and cheap projectile interceptors becoming more and more of a priority, while other companies are focusing on creating autonomous drones to intercept other drones. And while this system has limits - just this October, reports have started coming in of some regions failing to hit their recruitment quotas despite the massive payouts - it still dwarfs anything Kyiv can offer.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

How severe is Ukraine’s manpower crisis?

According to the Kyiv Independent, Ukraine’s military is gripped by a deep manpower crisis most acute in its infantry ranks, with battalion commanders sometimes reporting fewer than ten combat-effective infantrymen in their entire battalion. Emeritus Professor Lawrence Freedman estimates Ukraine is short of about 100,000 troops, consistent with official figures showing over 110,000 troops left their posts without leave between January and July 2025.

How does Ukraine’s desertion problem compare to Russia’s?

Both sides face significant desertion rates, but the founder of Frontelligence Insight notes that desertions remain more frequent on the Ukrainian side and that Moscow is more effective at returning its troops to the front. Ukraine’s own Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi acknowledged that Russian forces are growing by about 9,000 troops per month, underlining the asymmetry.

What role did the Kursk operation play in the manpower crisis?

The Kursk operation drew badly-needed troops away from critical frontline positions such as Pokrovsk in the Donbas, where they were arguably more urgently needed. Since Kursk ended, Ukraine’s forces have been in a perpetual fire-brigade posture, constantly shifting spare units to threatened sectors of the front to prevent a Russian breakthrough, at the cost of other directions.

How are Ukrainian commanders adapting to the infantry shortage?

A recent Atlantic article reported that Ukrainian commanders’ current goal is to avoid a situation where their infantry ever directly encounter Russian soldiers, instead having men hold positions while drones and artillery do the killing. This reflects both tactical innovation and the practical reality that willing, combat-ready infantrymen are in chronically short supply.

What is the quality problem with newly conscripted Ukrainian soldiers?

As one frontline soldier told the Kyiv Independent, many of those arriving in 2025 are what soldiers call “bussified” — men forcibly taken away in recruitment buses who lack the will to fight and have no sense of purpose. This distinguishes the current intake sharply from earlier volunteers, compounding Ukraine’s challenge of maintaining a combat-effective force.

Sources

Conflicts & Crises