131
Russia Has Lost 1.2 Million Troops in Ukraine—More Than Its Entire Pre-War Army
(united24media.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
131 points (94.6% liked)
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More like 35 years until they have 0 military age males left if the current pace of losses continues. This also doesn't factor in people that fled the country after the conscriptions were announced.
14/0.4 = 35
https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/russian-military-facing-looming-demography-crisis
Sadly^[I mean that earnestly. Having an entire generation hollowed out of a country is tragic in any context.], it's just ~1-2 years for Ukraine.
Both countries are in the same position demographically. Their pyramids looks almost identical.
Key difference is a factor of 4.
Do these graphs cite a source? I can't make any out, but maybe it's a text color thing.
The chart I shared is from the NYT, which is not known for a pro-Russian bias.
Data is from United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, visual pyramids are from populationpyramids.org.
Okay, I've had time to parse things a little.
Interestingly, the NYT chart and the pyramids website use the same data source! I didn't expect that because the charts look different to me, but maybe that's just because the NYT chart has more granularity.
It looks like you're right that the two countries share the same same demographic "shape". The culprit is Gorbachev and the catastrophic dissolution of the USSR which caused birthrates to plummet in all former Soviet states, so it makes sense that they would suffer similar fates.
It also looks like the war did, in fact, worsen the problem for Ukraine, which had a ~50% drop among fighting-aged men (which is coincidentally also the "nadir" cohort) from 2021 to 2023 😦. Somehow they gained some people in 2024. I don't understand how that's possible TBH—it's not like the war has got better in that time. Have there been a lot of repatriations? [Edit: Yes.]
NYT charts for 2021, 2023, and 2024
We would need it to compare it to the changes in Russia's population over the same period to have the full picture. I'm going to go get dinner so maybe another comrade can help me out. I would expect a similar dynamic, but less pronounced due to the 4x population difference.
I only skimmed the report, but there is research on this.
Also, it will probably spike again if US goes through their plan to deport Ukrainian refugees.
Good find; thanks! So it is repatriations.
I hope the US doesn't do that, because forcing people into a war zone against their will would be even more cruel than the typical deportations already are.
One line in the intro caught my eye:
It made me laugh, because the author obviously started with the FULL-SCALE INVASION line that the Anglo media has been uniformly blasting for years, but—because academic work is less propagandistic than the news—they paused to give it some thought and correctly realized that there is no way to know or define what a truly "full-scale" conflict is, so they removed the absolute language.
Thanks. We'll need to dig to figure out what's going on
I am optimistic that a forward-thinking Russia of the future won’t deny 6 year old girls or 90 year old women the egalitarian opportunity to “defend the motherland”.
Nah, the thing with "military age" is that you can write down a new set of numbers.
Like Russia cares what age you are. As long as you can buffer a few bullets, you're good to go!