Putin struggles to feed his meatgrinder
It is the first time Russia has lost more men than it can find to send to the frontline
Kyiv: Russia lost more men than it was able to recruit over the last three months for the first time, Western officials said.
Western officials made the claim about Russian troop levels during a briefing held to mark four years since Russia’s Vladimir Putin launched his illegal invasion of Ukraine.
European leaders from Poland and the European Commission will arrive in Kyiv on Tuesday local time to join Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who will mark the grim anniversary at Maidan Square.
In an interview with the BBC, Zelensky said Putin had started World War Three.
Ukrainians have survived their coldest winter in a decade, with temperatures plunging to minus 20 degrees Celsius with no heating and little electricity, because of Russia’s attacks on their energy infrastructure around the capital.
But they are also buoyed by signs that the toll on Russia is also extensive.
Estimating total Russian casualty figures at 1.25 million over the period of four years, Western officials said that the development was highly significant as it could force Mr Putin to start ‘coercively’ mobilising men for the frontline.
‘The Russians lost more men over the last three months than they were able to recruit; that is really significant in their ability to force-generate enough forces to undertake whatever that summer offensive looks like,’ Western officials said.
‘It starts to raise the issue of coercive mobilisation, within Russia which is a huge political moment in Russia and political decision for Russia to take.
‘At which point does he take the decision to enact coercive mobilisation? We’re probably not there yet.
‘Broadly speaking, they’re able to maintain (recruitment levels) but for how long is a question. That manpower calculus is critical.’
Officials also said that this could force Mr Putin to start raiding Russia’s cities for men, instead of the rural and regional areas.
The UK’s Armed Forces Minister Al Carns, a former Royal Marine, said this could also fray support for the war inside Russia.
‘If that balance starts to tip and you need to start looking into some of those more urban areas you start to undermine, I would argue, or start to fracture some of the political support that sits within those high-density areas,’ Carns said.
Along with deploying North Koreans to fight in Eastern Europe, Russia has increasingly relied upon paid mercenaries and luring foreigners to fight its war against Ukraine. The military recruits between 30,000 and 35,000 men per month, according to Western officials.
European leaders have often referred to President Putin’s battlefield tactics as a ‘meatgrinder’ because he is willing to allow so many Russians to die to achieve tiny gains of land in the country’s east.
Russia pays men to join the army and fight in the war, but the official said this incentive had lost its lustre because Russians realised this was a one-way ticket.
The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service’s (EFIS) annual report, widely considered to be one of the leading analysts of conditions in Russia, recently exposed Russia’s tactic of luring African university students to Russia to study, only to send them to the frontline.
It said that hundreds of citizens from Zambia, Tanzania, Guinea, Cameroon, Eritrea, Nigeria and other states had been sent to the frontline.
‘For example, students studying in Belgorod were lured to Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory under the pretext of a “job opportunity,”’ the report said.
‘After signing what they believed was an employment contract, they were sent to military training and then straight to the front line.
‘Despite an embassy’s protest demanding the students’ return to Russia, none survived. Only their remains were handed over or repatriated.’
EFIS said that Russia awarded scholarships to students that were deliberately insufficiently funded in order to force students to choose between deportation and military service. It also said that Russian raids on gyms and other public facilities to find men to fight had also netted foreigners.
Speaking at London’s Chatham House, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who commanded Ukraine’s initial fight, said that modern warfare, dominated by drones, had completely exhausted both Russia and Ukraine’s mobilisation efforts
The battlefront in Ukraine has largely frozen with a ‘kill zone’ of between 10 and 30 kilometres deep, where both sides use drones to fly across this area to target each other’s logistics.
‘The model of warfare that involves trading human lives for technical gains is no longer a logical or viable option,’ Zaluzhnyi said.
The Institute for the Study of War said that Ukraine was ‘nowhere close to defeat’ four years on.
‘Ukrainian forces — still outnumbered — thwarted the Russian advance on Kyiv in the first weeks of the invasion and continue to reclaim their territory,’ the IWS said.
‘According to ISW estimates, Russia now occupies 20 per cent of Ukraine and only seized 0.8 per cent in 2025.’
Ukrainians are also celebrating the success of Elon Musk’s decision to deny Russia access to Starlink’s communication satellites.
Ukraine’s newly-appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov used his personal relationship with billionaire Elon Musk to have Starlink turned off in Russia, a move which has helped handicap Russia’s battlefield offensive.
Fedorov previously oversaw Ukraine’s digital transition before being promoted to defence minister.
‘That has had an impact, that is a thing,’ Western officials said.
Officials said Russia’s increasing reliance on using drones from between 100 and 30 kilometres from the frontline to attack Ukraine had been affected.
‘Their loss of that ability is having an effect.’
Officials said Russians on the frontline were also not able to use their messaging app Telegram, which had also had an impact.
This is an expanded version of an article first published by The Nightly