Quote:
Originally Posted by Bestbrian
That's the popular view of Russia that's been burned into our head since the Napoleonic Wars and WWII through the Cold War, but current Russian demography is pitiful( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia).
Pair that with an authoritarian system that's trying to fight a war while hiding it from its urban population centers (which precludes drafting large numbers from Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc) and there aren't endless waves of Ivans to throw at the trenches anymore, especially of 18-49 year old males from rural backwaters. They might very well run out of men to crew their mothballed T-62s long before they run out of the vehicles themselves.
Keep in mind that Ukraine's demographics aren't much better, but the circumstances of this conflict allows them to mass mobilize a military backed by a highly motivated civilian population with a direct stake in the outcome, which gives them a higher percentage of a smaller pool. We'll have a better idea where this is all heading when the Ukrainian counteroffensives begin. |
It's also worth noting that Russia's other recent(ish) wars have been against much smaller nations. Chechnya has a total population of 1.4 million. Georgia's population is 3.7 million. Ukraine has a population of 43.8 million. There's a literal order of magnitude of difference in the scale of what Russia's attempting to do here, and while the geography and type of war is much different, the size of the population Russia is trying to break the morale of is roughly the same as the population of Afghanistan.