My understanding is Russia normally has a standing military of about 900k soldiers and Ukraine 250k, and Russia does have about 3x the population. Russia also has a navy and air force that has largely been ineffective but require soldiers.
Russia invaded in Feb with about 175k soldiers, +/-25k. Now once they started getting resistance they might've sent some more but they were up against 250k, a similar number. But military doctrine says to assault a city you need numerical superiority of 3 to 1, a major city like Kiev probably 5 to 1, and they just didn't have that in Kiev. They thought they would be welcomed as liberators, no resistance, Zelensky would flee.
In April Russia retreated from Kiev, regrouped in the Donbas to claim some kind of limited victory, and then in May Ukraine mobilized their military to 700k and NATO approved about $90 billion in aid since then, though not all has been sent yet and maybe half of that is humanitarian. That's when the artillery, body armor, HIMARS, and anti aircraft systems came. Kharkiv rout was in Sept. Putin announced the mobilization of 300k in October. Kherson lost in Nov. Ukraine just announced another 200k mobilization, and rumors on telegram and with the ISW says Putin is getting ready to declare full mobilization sometime in the next month. Biden is asking for another $37 billion in aid now that midterms went fairly well for him.
Both sides are claiming about 100k in casualties for the other side and won't give their own, but roughly both of their original forces have become combat ineffective and needed conscription (which requires training and equipment) to become effective again. The Kharkiv and Kherson assaults happened before Russia could field their new force.
But to your point about the copium. Russia has this huge online disinformation apparatus. They used it in the 2016 US election and has used it elsewhere before and since. Putin screwed up the messaging so bad on this nobody in Russia knows what the war is about, or why they're there. It was supposed to be a special military operation against Nazis, but they go to Ukraine and don't see the Nazis, half of them end up casualties by people fighting for their country's existence and they have to declare a draft. And as we know war is a contest of will, so the Russia disinformation apparatus has been working overtime - but their audience is their own people. In contrast Ukraine's people don't need a morale boost or to be convinced this war is necessary, when they put stuff out their audience is the West. They worry the West will tire of supporting them. So they hire Hollywood studios to make videos and have Zelensky speaking in English.
But to go full mobilization the narrative for Russia now can't be that the enemy is Ukraine, the enemy is now the rest of the world, like with Hitler, Napoleon, Ghenghis Khan. And they're fighting almost a million pissed off Ukrainians with NATOs stockpiles.
www.asianews.it
www.newyorker.com
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