Russia has been bolstering its armed forces and ramping up weapons production in the expectation of a long war in Ukraine, where front lines have barely shifted for a year.

Those figures indicate that Russia has made significant progress both in signing recruits and in absorbing many fighters from the Wagner mercenary force into "voluntary formations".

Putin ordered a "partial mobilisation" of 300,000 reservists in September last year, prompting hundreds of thousands of young men to flee Russia to avoid being sent to fight.

But the future course of the war is uncertain, despite predictions by U.S. officials earlier this year that Russia's defeat on the battlefields of Ukraine would pierce Putin's hubris.

"What I said months ago was it's going to be long, hard, bloody because the nature of this particular fight and the type of defense that the Russians put in," Milley said.

While the Kremlin expects the United States to continue to support Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in security assistance, Putin is betting on Western fatigue over the war.

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