Katie Livingstone
Outmanned and outgunned by a nuclear power in the largest land war in Europe since 1945, Ukraine’s front line is increasingly held not by soldiers, but by machines and the skeleton crews that control them. Commanders describe brigades hollowed out to half strength or worse. Frontline units often operate at 50% to 60% of authorized manning, some as low as 30%.
In some sectors, a maximum of 12 fighters hold 5 to 10 kilometers of front, far below what Cold War-era NATO planning assumed for high-intensity defense. The numbers tell the story of an army running out of people. The average frontline soldier is 43 to 45 years old, according to Bloomberg. Roughly 200,000 troops are absent without leave, and around 2 million men are evading mobilization, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told CNN in January, with Western and Ukrainian analysts estimating the overall shortfall at 300,000 personnel.
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