African soldiers are deployed en masse by the Russian army

The war in Ukraine has entered a phase where manpower, not equipment, is becoming the most acute constraint for Russia. Years of attrition have steadily eroded Moscow’s ability to replenish its forces from domestic sources without triggering political risk at home. The Kremlin has tried to delay this reckoning through contracts, prisons, regional quotas, and financial incentives, but those tools are now losing effectiveness. As battlefield losses begin to outpace new enlistments, Russia is being pushed toward options it once treated as marginal or auxiliary. One of those options is the externalization of risk, shifting the human cost of the war away from Russian society itself. This dynamic explains why the conflict is now drawing in fighters from far beyond Russia’s borders, revealing a deeper layer of strategic exhaustion beneath the surface.

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