The Washington Post, citing a Ukrainian battalion commander, reported this week that “all” Ukrainian soldiers with combat experience are “already dead or wounded” — which may jeopardize the Zelensky regime’s planned “spring offense” aimed at taking back lost land from Russia. 

From The Washington Post, “Ukraine short of skilled troops and munitions as losses, pessimism grow”:

DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine — The quality of Ukraine’s military force, once considered a substantial advantage over Russia, has been degraded by a year of casualties that have taken many of the most experienced fighters off the battlefield, leading some Ukrainian officials to question Kyiv’s readiness to mount a much-anticipated spring offensive.

U.S. and European officials have estimated that as many as 120,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the start of Russia’s invasion early last year, compared with about 200,000 on the Russian side, which has a much larger military and roughly triple the population from which to draw conscripts. Ukraine keeps its running casualty numbers secret, even from its staunchest Western supporters.

Statistics aside, an influx of inexperienced draftees, brought in to plug the losses, has changed the profile of the Ukrainian force, which is also suffering from basic shortages of ammunition, including artillery shells and mortar bombs, according to military personnel in the field.

“The most valuable thing in war is combat experience,” said a battalion commander in the 46th Air Assault Brigade, who is being identified only by his call sign, Kupol, in keeping with Ukrainian military protocol. “A soldier who has survived six months of combat and a soldier who came from a firing range are two different soldiers. It’s heaven and earth.”

“And there are only a few soldiers with combat experience,” Kupol added. “Unfortunately, they are all already dead or wounded.”

The Kyiv Independent, a Western-backed pro-Ukraine propaganda outlet, released a similarly bleak article on the war earlier this week detailing how Ukrainian soldiers know they’re being “sent to their deaths” in Bakhmut and lamenting how Russia can already “taste victory.”

I’ve seen speculation that this type of talk is to get the US/NATO to send more weapons and resources but both have been sending everything they can get their hands on for the past year while the media was busy putting out thousands of articles claiming the war was going splendidly for Ukraine.