Larger, but older, is probably a fair summation of the Russian (and Ukrainian) military in 2025 as compared to 2022.I’ve often focused on questions of equipment or economics rather than manpower regarding the war in Ukraine – in part because of how hard casualties and recruitment are to estimate.With the war now approaching the end of its third year however, I thought it was necessary to bring together some of the data we have to look at the Russian recruitment and casualty story since Feb 2022.I do however also want to include an illustrative warning.The challenge with trying to bring together multiple estimates is we can’t always be sure when estimates are independent vs when they derive from each otherThe Russian sources for example are likely drawing on a similar dataset or talking points – and the UK MoD figures included in this episode appear to reference Ukrainian numbers. That should sound a massive note of caution on how to approach these numbers.