Mechanized warfare requires a core of veteran troops and russia cannot figure out a formula where frontline soldiers, artillery and armor crews aren’t disposable one or two time use assets. Ukraine is chewing through russian frontline forces faster and more thoroughly than ever.

You can bullshit most of your frontlines with relatively unexperienced troops, but you need an actual proficient core that knows how to win reliably when they are given proper support and russia just doesn’t have it.

Meanwhile compared to russia, Ukrainians tend to survive and learn more often. Ukrainians come back from the frontlines more often. Ukrainians injured in combat are evacuated and recover more often. Disabled Ukrainian veterans have better accomodations in civilian life. These are the things that matter.

There is a quality to quantity but there is also a potential quality to a single person’s genius that can make raw quantities irrelevant… If you toss that potential away and use it as a vessel to carry an assault rifle with no training in a meatwave… can you afford to throw human lives away when your opponent is not so wasteful?

The answer is no, no you cannot.