The 14th Brigade was one of the brigades of the Kharkiv counteroffensive and has been the garrison of the Kupyansk sector basically since the city was liberated. In recent months pro-Russian sources for some reason made a lot of fuss about the fact that they had brought reinforcements into the area, that they were advancing kilometres towards Kupyansk from the forest north of the city, that the Ukrainians had evacuated the city… But nothing relevant actually happened, so there was no any obvious fuck-up. At the same time, as you well said, we don’t even know the 1% of what goes on behind the scenes.

One thing I would add, though, is that I would not downplay the importance of that role in Odesa, which is a very delicate position. It’s perhaps the most problematic region among the unoccupied part of the nation in terms of Russian influences - particularly Budjak (Ukrainian Bessarabia), as shown by polls and past election results, and unlike other places like Kharkiv it has never experienced war directly. I suppose the city still has serious problems with spies and fifth columns, with consequences in the mobilization process too. This also may lead to potentially serious problems with compromised military personnel and civil servants, as well as corruption in itself, as pointed out by u/Sgt_PuttBlug. Certainly the UAF wants to put its best and most trusted men in such contexts.

Well they often employ thermobaric rockets against Ukrainian positions with TOS-1s and Russian assault units field a flamethrower platoon with RPO-As (thermobaric rocket launchers). There were evidences of the use of such rocket launchers by Ukrainian units as well. That said, the Russians already seem to have a big advantage in the flammable ordnance stuff sadly. If they started using napalm, would it be a game changer for them?

It’s almost certainly true, I was thinking about it a while ago. The wars of recent decades in Arab or sub-Saharan countries reflect their generous population pyramids and very low median age, with lots of young people. All other wars in contemporary history with mass mobilization (first and foremost WW1-2) saw massive participation of 18/19 year olds, which are seen very seldom in this war on both sides and especially at this stage of the conflict. 40% of the Soviet KIAs during WW2 were under 25 for instance.

There were more young people at the beginning of this war, as the bulk of the Ukrainian Army and National Guard were made up of conscripts from military service, and the Russian Army was made up of young men who had signed up just after the draft. According to Mediazona’s datas, if in the early months the plurality of Russian KIAs were in the 21-26 bracket, now the age has increased greatly, due to the mobilized being generally in their 30s and the volunteers often being in their 40s.

It also applies to Ukrainians, who are visibly often in their 30s and 40s. It depends a lot from unit to unit too, for example the air assault brigades or those formed by volunteers (such as the 3rd Assault or the 67th Mechanized) seem to be the youngest ones, while the tank crews are generally the oldest, sometimes even in their 50s, probably people who had been tankmen during their military service and were mobilized.

Then war certainly makes you look older, that has to be said. At the same time, while historically the bulk of armies were made up of men in their early 20s, that is definitely not the case in this conflict. There are exceptions to the call-up of under 25 boys, at the same time university students are not drafted.

I can only think about the Croatian and Bosnian Wars as the only conflicts comparable in terms of relatively high median age of the fighters, at least from the footages I had seen. We’re talking about countries that had a younger demographic structure at the time than Russia or Ukraine currently, but they were conflicts that saw a large share of volunteers overall.

The wars of the modern age before mass mobilization saw many minors, particularly for campaign support roles.