It does appear that the Russians are experiencing hefty issues when it comes to manpower issues, as there have been multiple reports that they are looking to recruit out of prisons, and raise the cap on recruitment age. I think I also saw they were trying to get the wounded back into battle. Here is just one article to bolster that:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...er-shortages-us-intelligence-2022-08-31/I like you, was somewhat confounded when this was reported, because, like you mention, Russia has put a lot of resources and focus into the size of its military forces.
I was actually talking about this with some colleagues of mine and we noted the potential areas of asymmetry which play in Ukraine's favor:
1. The main military focus of Russia is Ukraine, but with their military size and prowess, they also have other areas that require their attention (Syria, drills with China, the shear land mass of their country, the Pacific, etc.). Ukraine can just focus on Ukraine.
2. Where the war is being fought. Russia is close to home, but it is not at home. It's still the invasive force. This requires a lot more manpower to not only man the front line, but also to supply the front lines. They have really struggled on this logistics front. Their lack of efficiency and proper planning means they need to throw more manpower at the situation now than if they had properly done so in the first place.
3. Manning the battlefield asymmetry. Russia obviously has a lot more tanks and a lot more of your conventional weaponry, columns, movements, etc. This in and of itself requires a lot of manpower just to move, let alone to fight. However, all the Ukrainians need is a guy with a mounted, shoulder-fire weapon to destroy a tank manned by 3 people. It seems like this might be compared to the Vietcong vs US Armed forces dynamic.
In any event, I hope that they both retake ground and especially trigger the "demoralization" factor for the Russians. At some point, I hope more and more of their front line troops just start to ask themselves "why the eff are we here????"
