Russia has 29.57million men between 20-50. So 700k are 2.37% casulties of that group. That is using Russian demographic statistics, which are probably wrong, due to people leaving Russia on mass.
All of them are not russian but still a large majority if I got my information correct. Still, combine that with over a million young people just leaving russia, a ruble in free fall, a "war time economy", inflation flirting with 30% (higher for food) and the central bank kicking up rates to a historically 21% high while promising that it won't actually help... and yeah everything is going according to plan for this "3 day special operation".
I know who's gonna go down in history on the losers side.
Even after increasing interest rates 3 times from 16% to 21% over a few months, the value of the Ruble is still declining!
I haven't been able to find much info on their inflation though, I've had to kind of extrapolate that, but if it's really higher than 30% for food, there must be a lot of Russian families that feel that badly. Hopefully that will help cool the Russians support for the war.
IMO it's unlikely that inflation is lower than 15%, which will already be a problem for many Russians, and will only get worse with Putins current economic policies.
I'd be interested to know where you get info on inflation in Russia?
Their unemployment rate hit the historic low in September 2023. Yes, they still have 1.8 million unemployed, but since the number stayed the same while there's a demand for human force, those are actually likely unemployable ones.
Before the war they had roughly double of that amount of unemployed ones.
So looks like
They already employed everybody they could
They already sent to war (and lost) everyone who wasn't bringing much value
So yeah, they only lost 2% of potential soldiers, but it appears that already since a year ago they lost all "spare" men and every single one they scrape now is
a) likely not fit for military
b) was involved in military economy
Yes, they can continue like this for a while, but the cost of each new soldier will be bigger and bigger, the quality and equipment lower and lower. And the system will snap way before all of them are "expended". Ukraine says summer next year ( https://www.kyivpost.com/post/39020 ) given all this I tend to believe that forecast.
There is always a bit of unemployment, due to people switching jobs.
Sign up bonuses are hitting above $30k right now, with pretty good pay and death bonus. Everybody willing to join the war, even for money probably sign up. So they have to force people, which leads to men fleeing the country.
Russia has been a country growing due to migrants. However due to the war propaganda being more and more far right, that means the government has to act on it. So they crack down on migrants, while lacking workers.
Russia has massive financial problems right now, while secondary sanctions hit foreign trade. That means more workers are needed, as Russia can no longer buy as many foreign goods.
However looking at casualties is a good metric to see, how much danger Russia will be in the future. Together with migration problems, this is very likely shrinking their future population by 10% or more, compared to never having launched the full scale invasion.