At the start of the war there was plenty of meat being thrown into the trenches on the Ukraine side. Have you not seen any videos of men being press-ganged off the streets or in their homes? Or of the protesting wives of TDF units thrown into the trenches with virtually no training and only token weapons and ammo? (You can find plenty of both on Ukrainian Telegram channels.)

If Ukraine is treating their soldiers better now, it’s at least partly because they’re running out of them.