March 1, 2026: While Russia is running out of soldiers, Ukraine isn’t. Russian troops are constantly attacking, and the Ukrainians have developed defensive tactics that maximize Russian losses and minimize Ukrainian casualties. Ukrainian soldiers are better trained, equipped and led. Ukrainians receive two or three months of training before going into combat. Their officers and sergeants are skilled veterans. Russian soldiers often go into combat with minimal training, as in a week or two to learn how to use their weapons and operate on a battlefield subjected to constant drone surveillance and attack. Russian officers are told to shoot any soldiers who refuse to attack or try to desert. Most Russians now realize that being sent to Ukraine you are likely to be killed or wounded. When new Russian recruits realize how little preparation they received, they understand why Russian casualties are so high.

The situation has deteriorated to the point that this year Russia has not been able to obtain enough new recruits each month to replace those lost in the previous month. Most Russian soldiers are enlisted via a voluntary contract. Large sums are paid for those who sign and up to $2,000 a month is paid to those who go to Ukraine. Death benefits for next of kin are also high. Unfortunately, many of these payments are never made because the body of the dead soldier must be returned to the family before all this money is turned over to the family. A growing number of bodies are either not returned, or the dead soldier is reported as missing in action. The bodies are buried in Ukraine. The graves are not marked, and Russian army officials tell the families that their man went missing or perhaps deserted. Details of this scam have reached Russian families, despite government efforts to censor the internet and social media apps. This means fewer voluntary recruits and a growing manpower crisis for the Russian army, which has had to delay or cancel planned offensive operations.

The situation is much different in Ukraine. Last year it became legal for military age men to leave the country. In 2021 there were 2 million Ukrainians living outside Ukraine. Since 2022 that has been increasing each year. Current Ukrainian population is about 39 million and the government has been seeking ways to improve morale while also sustaining the fight against Russian invaders.

One proposal which was implemented was establishing universal training for 18-22 year old men. For those still in school, mandatory training for male students is now conducted in universities and other post-high school institutions as a standalone subject. Training consists of 90 hours of theoretical instruction followed by 210 hours of practical training Subjects include basic methods of military service, first aid, and operational tactics before they move to hands-on exercises in specialized training centers. This approach is supposed to make the trainees more confident about military service and less likely to flee the country because they feared what might happen if they went to war.

Ukrainians have been fighting the Russians for over four years and are seeking to institutionalize their military lessons learned. The Russians are now short of resources and still operate under economic sanctions. Ukraine believes that with improved training for all their personnel, they will reduce their own casualties while increasing those of the Russians. Vladimir Putin vowed to keep fighting for as long as it took. That will be an empty promise if Putin discovers that a major change in troop quality makes any Russian military efforts futile and very costly in terms of men and resources.

Ukraine already has some units that adopted these improved methods before the war but never had time or resources to retrain everyone. Over the last year Ukrainians have been standardizing their troop training and using methods that combine all that has been learned so far. This is done by simply by adopting what did work, discarding what didn’t and gradually retraining all units that were not using the most effective methods. All new recruits would be taught to use the new techniques, even if it lengthened the basic training.

NATO nations add individual training for sergeants and officers, some of it delivered via videos, including interactive versions. European NATO members play a larger role in this retraining because they are close enough, often adjacent to Ukraine, to receive Ukrainian trainees and send them back quickly after training is complete.