Top Highlights

• As the conflict in Ukraine nears its first anniversary, both sides have settled in for a long war.
• Russia does not have a ready and deployable reserve like America’s Army Reserve or National Guard.
• A spate of protests occurred and several recruiting stations were set on fire or shot up, while hundreds of thousands of young men, many of them from Russia’s educated professional class, have fled to neighboring countries such as Armenia and Georgia.
• Within a week of the initial invasion, Russian soldiers were sometimes sabotaging their own vehicles to evade combat.
• Ukraine appears now to have lost the manpower advantage it briefly held last year. But Russia’s increased numbers are unlikely to overcome Ukrainian will and skill. As the French philosopher Voltaire noted more than two centuries ago: “God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.”

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