This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel with my colleague Bill Rajo, senior fellow Foundation for the Defense of Democracy,

keeping the Long War Journal.

And a major contributor is with us now.

John Hardy of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy has a piece up now on Ukraine in the tactical situation.

John Manpower again and again it comes up when we talk about Ukrainian forces ability to withstand

the Russian onslaught. The question is that here comes to Trump administration where the

president-elect has made clear that 18 is the draft age, not 25, as a present condition.

Mr. Zelensky's response is, that's the future of Ukraine.

We keep it at 25.

I believe the average age of the man in the front lines for Ukraine is in the 40s.

Bill, you have a question about manpower.

John, there has been reports of desertions and AWOL. One unit that has particularly stuck out

has been the 155th mechanized brigade. Is this indicative of a breakdown in Ukraine's effort to continue building the military?

Are we witnessing the cracks in the foundation, so to speak?

Right. So I think that over the past year or so, Ukraine has continued to stand up new brigades,

the 155th being one of them. And I think the trouble with that

decision is that Ukraine has fairly limited manpower. As John noted, that it's really been their

chief problem, is a shortage of troops, unable to replace combat losses at a sufficient

rate. So units are increasingly under strength and exhausted. And

Ukraine really struggles to rotate troops off the front line and replace them with fresh units.

So I think Ukraine, you know, as I said, has been forming a number of new brigades. Those brigades

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