Frontline fatigue as Ukraine runs on empty

Ukrainian manpower and conscription is honestly a complete mess right now. After four years of this brutal war with Russia, you've got millions of Ukrainian men of fighting age scattered all over Europe - some managed to leave early on, especially if they were under 24 or could find a loophole, but now the country's basically sealed and most guys are stuck. Meanwhile, frontline brigades are barely hanging on at 25-30% strength, and nobody has a real plan to fix that or bring people back. The people who could afford it or were allowed to leave are gone, and the rest are just left to grind it out with a broken system. To make up the numbers, Ukraine's even started recruiting prisoners to fight - not as extreme as Russia, since in Ukraine only people with less serious convictions can volunteer (so murderers and rapists are excluded), but still, it's grim. I saw a BBC interview with Ukrainian prisoners who basically said at least now their skills are “useful.” Russia, on the other hand, is straight-up emptying its prisons and shoving anyone they consider “undesirable” - minorities, convicts, whoever - into suicidal assaults. Both sides are scraping the bottom of the barrel, but in totally different ways. And the worst part is, Europe’s out here shouting that Ukraine has to “fight to the last man,” but without giving them the money, weapons, or even the basic support to fix their brigade system or replace leaders like Zelenskyy and Syrskyi, who clearly haven’t figured out a winning strategy and have basically nuked morale. It just feels like Ukraine is being pushed to bleed itself dry for nothing, while everyone else sits back and watches. What an absolute nightmare.