Ukraine Is Running Out Of Troops.

In addition to begging the Us for more weapons (and money), Ukraine's leader is dealing with a reduction of manpower: 

On the global stage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been consistently on message: In visits to Washington and other Western capitals, he has focused on keeping Kyiv supplied with more advanced arms, ammunition and financing.

At home, however, he faces a human resources problem. The war is approaching the end of its second year, and Ukraine’s military needs more manpower to sustain a bloody war of attrition against Russia, a country with more than three times the population of Ukraine.

In a recent essay, Ukraine’s top military commander, Valery Zaluzhny acknowledged that training and recruiting troops was becoming a serious challenge.

“The prolonged nature of the war, limited opportunities for the rotation of soldiers on the line of contact, gaps in legislation that seem to legally evade mobilization, significantly reduce the motivation of citizens to serve with the military,” he said.

The essay acknowledged a bleak reality: Ukraine needs more people in uniform, and it needs them now.

So, how serious is Ukraine’s mobilization challenge? The issue is clouded, in part, by official secrecy. Kyiv does not publicly disclose its manpower targets; nor does it reveal the total number of dead and wounded, although casualties on both sides since February 2022 are estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands.

Kinda hard to recruit when you won't tell your citizens what happened to their fellow countrymen. Anyway:

Ukraine fills its ranks with volunteers but also has a system of conscription that allows the state to draft men of military age.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine imposed martial law, under which all males between the ages of 18 and 60 were considered liable for military service and could be mobilized unless they were eligible for a deferment. In 2023, the rules of military registration were updated to include women. But the measures stopped short of full conscription.

Martial law introduced draconian travel restrictions. Men between 18 and 60 are generally barred from exiting the country, although there are a wide range of exemptions, covering everything from single parents of young children to professional athletes.

While it is difficult to get an exact portrait of how far Ukrainians are responding to the call to serve in the military, officials have acknowledged publicly that evading military service and enforcing mobilization rules are an issue.

I would assume that people are evading service because now you're willing to have 60-year-old women fighting along side whatever amount of young trained soldiers exist on the battlefield, not to mention imprisoning a majority of your citizens so they have little choice but take arms of go AWOL. 

But this is kinda moot as Ukraine has all but lost: