"...you can measure the effect of the German invasion of 1941 demographically. Perhaps the Russians have begun to recover from the death toll and all the people not born because so many men and women of child-bearing age died too soon."


Yea, they did recover to some extent but then the chaos and uncertainty of the nineties put a stop to that and created a new demographic crisis. I think this later makes Russia very sensitive to the issue of losing its young people as it's mostly the rarer children of this dip who are at risk now.

The west were I reckon hoping for those wreckless "meat assaults" they never stopped going on about , which would capitalise on this weakness and of course the view corresponds to their ( quite mythical) " understanding" of Russians as mindless Orks under the control of a Putin-Sauron dictator.

I think so far they've been rather disappointed as aside from technology,to some extent the Russian fear of demographic loss is also responsible for tactical changes: it's notable that the Ukrainian soldiers in the field so often remark they never see a Russian soldier, so extensive is the use of artillery, rockets and drones, untill it's all over.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is seriously on its way to losing half it's population, mostly to emigration: They won't be coming back either.