The Ukrainian Defense Ministry admits that Kiev's main problem now is not weapons, but a lack of people; no one wants to join the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and soon they will have no one to fight with.
"The problem now is not in weapons, but in people. No one wants to join the army. The brigades tell us that they cannot carry out rotation, that they are exhausted. Soon there will be no people to fight," the head of the mission that arrived from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in the village of Ulakly to inspect the units told the newspaper.
Let us recall that in these weeks in Ukraine they began a total mobilization, grabbing men at markets, concerts, clubs, etc., in order to stop the collapse of the front.
How much longer do y'all think this will go? I've heard until the end of this year but I think that's soon, maybe it ends next year?
I can't see how it can go past next year, but realistically it could end this year as well. Now that the collapse of the army started, the pace of events is going to accelerate dramatically. There's going to be an inflection point where there just aren't enough experienced and motivated people to hold things together, and we might be on the cusp of it already. The AFU isn't able to hold positions, they have mass desertion, and everybody knows the war is lost at this point.
I know I’m not as well read on the subject as you are Yogthos, but my impression is that both Russia and the west end up with some benefits to extend this as much as possible, so I’d expect it to go to the next year easily, unless it’s a major collapse on the front (or mass desertion).
From Russian perspective, they mainly don't want to do big arrow offensives because they are very costly. However, there's not much benefit for Russia to drag this out indefinitely. We can also see that Russian army is starting to push more aggressively in the past few months as the resistance weakens. I imagine one thing Russia would like to avoid would be to end up in a direct conflict with NATO, and the longer the war goes the more chances of that it could happen at some point.
From western perspective, there is a lot of incentive to keep this going politically. At the very least, Ukraine can't collapse before the election in the US happens. However, it looks like the west is starting to run dry of the support it's able to provide in material terms. On top of that, there's now a brewing war between Iran and Israel which is already diverting resources from Ukraine.
Personally, I can't see how Ukraine holds out for another year here. The manpower shortage is their biggest problem, and the west can't fix that short of putting boots on the ground. Yet, even if that could somehow happen, then there's still the issue with shortage of weapons and ammunition.
I see, thank you for the insights :D