This is how it went:

You said Ukraine values its manpower more than Russia.

I agreed with you, and added that it is because they have less manpower.

You then brought up some democracy index like that was relevant to the topic.

I inferred from this that you were explaining that you believe they value manpower more due to their hybrid regime versus Russia's authoritarian regime and disagreed with you on that cause.

You called my inferrence a "strawman" and then asked for evidence against your first claim, that I agreed with.

Please read more carefully.

Ukraine is supposed to have allies which are capable of, as you said, fighting wars without the concept of cannon fodder.

They should show class then.

However, as you might have noticed, the Russia-Ukraine war started, well, with "elite", better trained troops fighting each other. And later devolved into what there is now.

Not just that, WWII started with "professional", "elite", better trained troops, but you know how it was fought. And before WWII all the sides too were theoretizing about new, swift, well-organized, mobile warfare. Guderian, Liddell Hart, Tukhachevsky and who not. And they were right, but only in adding a less bloody layer, so to say, that gets eroded before things are done the old-fashioned way.

So it could just be that this - it being possible to fight a big war with an equal adversary without eventually devolving into WWII-style warfare, - is another Western myth invented to support some kind of exceptionalism.

Pretty easy to invent various myths about wars between equals when you are not ever going to fight an equal adversary, only a much weaker one.

I hope you don't think wars in Iraq in 1991 or in 2003 or bombings of Yugoslavia are indicative of anything.