There's a level of nuance here. Initially, as with most wars, they had a lot of volunteers. Ukraine had one of the biggest standing armies in Europe. They positioned that army in the east of the country poised to level Donetsk and Luhansk (the original two breakaway provinces). That's why Putin pulled the trigger. He knew 130,000 men were about to come in and wreak havoc on the ethnic Russian communities there. He flattened that army in about 2 months.
Ukraine then set about to recruit and train a second army. They sent tens of thousands of men overseas to the US and Europe for training. We gave them months of training of NATO weapons' systems, tactics, combined arms warfare, etc all at the taxpayers' expense. While they were training, Putin pushed out and secured the land bridge to Crimea, conquered Mariupol and Melitopol, secured Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Zaporozhia, and occupied pretty much everything south of the Dneiper River. They did push forward beyond that, but ceded it in a controlled retreat when Ukraine's 2nd army showed up and started pushing back.
Now, both of these armies were staffed with men predominantly from Western Ukraine where the nationalist sentiment is stronger. These guys were the "Neo-Nazis" in the vein of Stepan Bandera, etc and who really hated Russians. They were more than happy to sign up and fight and they fought reasonably well, despite the incompetent command structure, terrible leadership, shitty supply lines, mishmosh training and equipment, and some pretty ugly battlefield conditions (ie mud, deep winter combat, etc). Estimates of the dead around this time were 150-200K "casualties" (KIA and wounded)
What we're seeing now is a third army. It's got very few highly trained members and few combat veterans to lead them. Those people have all been killed in action by now. They're mostly conscripts. There are tons of videos of unwilling men being effectively kidnapped off the street, out of buses, university classes, restaurants, gyms, etc by the Ukrainian army commissars. They have minimal training, no will whatsoever to fight, and they're being slaughtered as fast as the Ukrainians can send them in.
The losses have been staggering. Estimates regularly top 500K Ukrainian KIA, with common understanding being 3x that number wounded. The fights for Mariupol and Bakhmut/Artemovsk were particularly bloody with tens of thousands of Ukrainian dead. Avdiivka looks to be the latest holdout that Ukraine is paying for in tens of thousands of lives. Russia now has it surrounded on three sides and they've had several breakthroughs of the Ukrainian defenses that make it look like it may soon fall.
This latest combat looks like a "Volksturm" (they actually use this term, believe it or not) where Ukraine is literally just throwing meat at the Russian army. This is why they're racking up such huge casualty numbers and why we're seeing these massive cemeteries. There are cemeteries like the one in this video popping up on satellite photos all over the country. It's truly remarkable to see. But, it seems the decision-makers still think the terms of ending this war are "unacceptable," so they'll keep paying in other peoples' blood. Ghouls. All of them.
There's a level of nuance here. Initially, as with most wars, they had a lot of volunteers. Ukraine had one of the biggest standing armies in Europe. They positioned that army in the east of the country poised to level Donetsk and Luhansk (the original two breakaway provinces). That's why Putin pulled the trigger. He knew 130,000 men were about to come in and wreak havoc on the ethnic Russian communities there. He flattened that army in about 2 months.
Ukraine then set about to recruit and train a second army. They sent tens of thousands of men overseas to the US and Europe for training. We gave them months of training of NATO weapons' systems, tactics, combined arms warfare, etc all at the taxpayers' expense. While they were training, Putin pushed out and secured the land bridge to Crimea, conquered Mariupol and Melitopol, secured Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Zaporozhia, and occupied pretty much everything south of the Dneiper River. They did push forward beyond that, but ceded it in a controlled retreat when Ukraine's 2nd army showed up and started pushing back.
Now, both of these armies were staffed with men predominantly from Western Ukraine where the nationalist sentiment is stronger. These guys were the "Neo-Nazis" in the vein of Stepan Bandera, etc and who really hated Russians. They were more than happy to sign up and fight and they fought reasonably well, despite the incompetent command structure, terrible leadership, shitty supply lines, mishmosh training and equipment, and some pretty ugly battlefield conditions (ie mud, deep winter combat, etc). Estimates of the dead around this time were 150-200K "casualties" (KIA and wounded)
What we're seeing now is a third army. It's got very few highly trained members and few combat veterans to lead them. Those people have all been killed in action by now. They're mostly conscripts. There are tons of videos of unwilling men being effectively kidnapped off the street, out of buses, university classes, restaurants, gyms, etc by the Ukrainian army commissars. They have minimal training, no will whatsoever to fight, and they're being slaughtered as fast as the Ukrainians can send them in.
The losses have been staggering. Estimates regularly top 500K Ukrainian KIA, with common understanding being 3x that number wounded. The fights for Mariupol and Bakhmut/Artemovsk were particularly bloody with tens of thousands of Ukrainian dead. Avdiivka looks to be the latest holdout that Ukraine is paying for in tens of thousands of lives. Russia now has it surrounded on three sides and they've had several breakthroughs of the Ukrainian defenses that make it look like it may soon fall.
This latest combat looks like a "Volksturm" (they actually use this term, believe it or not) where Ukraine is literally just throwing meat at the Russian army. This is why they're racking up such huge casualty numbers and why we're seeing these massive cemeteries. There are cemeteries like the one in this video popping up on satellite photos all over the country. It's truly remarkable to see. But, it seems the decision-makers still think the terms of ending this war are "unacceptable," so they'll keep paying in other peoples' blood. Ghouls. All of them.