Of course they have desertions, conditions are brutal and the war has been dragging on for years. They are running out of people who are willing or able to fight.
Now do Russia.
They have some number of young men between 18-25 it seems. You'd be hard pressed to find a more able group in a population suited to fight. I get that Europeans have a severe crunch in their demographics, but refusing to draft young men looks weird.
I'm curious how many people either country have available. I have zero special expertise in either of the following, just going on "gut" here.
1) I don't really trust either one of them to be accurate about their losses. The "official numbers" are just absurd on their face. I get that countries are reluctant to share information about casualties, but they'd be better off just not saying anything if that's the case.
2) I also don't trust either to be honest about their population as a whole. I see claims from the UN that Ukraine is a country of 41 million people, but that includes areas under Russian control. The IMF says the population is 33 million. Reuters reports it's around 28 million. Im not sure if that is including refugees or not. Ukraine hasn't had a census in over 20 years.
The UN says there are about 4 million refugees in Poland, Russia, and Germany alone. Another 500k in Chechia. Who knows if that has grown or shrank but it seems reasonable that the number fluctuates as some leave or return.
Russia's claimed population is 147 million per a 2021 census. But it's also a giant country with remote populations and serial corruption problems from the top down. Would anyone be surprised if some local bureaucrats were juicing the numbers to get more funding? Like Ukraine, many men worried about conscription have fled the country. I read southeast Asia is a popular destination? Who knows.
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