Last year, Russia slowly advanced into Ukraine: tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers were killed or wounded, and entire mechanized divisions were lost in exchange for a Ukrainian territory slightly larger than Rhode Island, the smallest American state. At this rate, Russia will control all of Ukraine in approximately 118 years.
Keep this figure in mind when you hear Donald Trump or Vice President JD Vance declaring, as American President did last week at the Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that Ukraine is „losing” the war and is in a „very bad position,” as stated in an analysis published in The Atlantic.
Two individuals who have closely monitored the war in Ukraine over the past three years have analyzed which of the two parties involved in the conflict has time on their side.
George Barros, from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), has consistently monitored Russia’s position and accordingly updated the front map published by this organization. And Andrey Liscovich leads a charity organization, the Ukrainian Defense Fund. The NGO has provided non-lethal aid to Ukraine since 2022, based on the theory (confirmed in the past year) that the war will be won not by those who can produce the most shells, but by those who can most effectively equip their troops with items like batteries and radio kits. He has repeatedly visited the front lines of Ukrainian defense.
### Russians have switched from tanks to mules
Barros said that the war has slowed to the point where both sides are only gaining and losing a few square kilometers of barren land at a time. Russia „is not going through an urban environment,” he said. „It’s mostly uninhabited steppes, with a few villages and just two major operational cities last year. That’s all they can show.”
The material cost of this dubious territory was staggering: in one of the main operating areas in Donetsk, Russia lost about 500 tanks and 1,000 armored personnel carriers – roughly a division for every 10 kilometers of advancement, Barros said. He added that Russians were recently observed using mules instead of mechanized transport vehicles.
Even the US military has protocols for using mules in challenging environments, such as jungles or rough terrain. But using these pack animals on the plains of eastern Ukraine suggests desperation.
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„Russians have exhausted their Soviet-era stocks,” Barros said. According to him, the Uralvagonzavod tank factory and the Tula ammunition plant have been working non-stop since the war broke out, but they cannot cover the losses suffered on the front.
„Assuming they don’t receive a massive injection of vehicles from North Koreans or Chinese, the Russians are about to reach a critical level in the next 12 to 18 months,” Barros said.
### Drones have rendered tanks obsolete
These signs would be wonderful for Ukrainians if the way of fighting had not changed in the past year, Liscovich said.
„The war has qualitatively changed since 2022,” Liscovich said. In the first month of the conflict, Ukraine became a hunting ground where Ukrainians armed with Javelin missile systems destroyed Russian armored columns. But then the war turned into an artillery battle where each side lobbed shells at the other.
The issue that worried Ukraine’s allies was the gap in artillery shells: they were being used up faster than they could be replenished by factories in the US, Germany, and Slovakia. „We kept hearing these complaints that there weren’t enough 155-millimeter shells. Now it’s primarily a drone war, and you no longer hear those complaints about shells,” he explained.
Most of the losses on the front line are now attributed to drones. And Russia can produce new drones much faster than it can build tanks. Since the beginning of the war, Liscovich said, Ukraine has had innovation on its side born out of necessity. But Russia has noticed the innovations, created countermeasures, and deployed its own drones, using the new production capacity but on a larger scale than its much smaller adversary.
As a result, tanks no longer matter. „Heavy equipment is being taken out of the fight,” Liscovich said, adding that infantry is making most of the progress (for Russia), as „drones are harder to use against small dispersed groups.” The main countermeasure is mortar fire, cheap and mobile.
### Whom the war prolongation benefits
The total number of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war remains a subject of dispute among experts, although all agree that the figures circulated by both sides are unsustainable.
Earlier this year, Trump himself estimated that Russia had lost a million soldiers (a level that would leave Russia empty, with its current population of 143 million, before its forces could reach Lviv). Most estimate a much smaller number: the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, estimated that Russia suffered 427,000 casualties last year, a number certainly inflated.
Russia’s ability to recruit new personnel is completely compromised, Barros argues. Vladimir Putin has relied on mercenary soldiers and convicted criminals, in combination with offering generous bonuses to poor Russians who volunteer to try their luck against the Ukrainians.
Barros says there is now a delicate social contract between Putin and his citizens: „The contract is: I won’t force you to fight in Ukraine. I’ll pay you to fight in Ukraine.”
Regional authorities are responsible for recruitment, and the Samara region offered a $36,000 recruitment bonus, „not including other benefits and salary rights,” Barros said. It’s equivalent to two or three years’ income, collected at enrollment, he noted.
In a poor country like Russia, dividing fistfuls of rubles is the definition of desperation. Russia has an inflation rate approaching 20% (officially, it’s about 9%) and has depleted its sovereign fund on the war. But Ukraine is also poor and faces manpower issues similar to Russia’s.
Liscovich emphasized that Russia’s population is three times larger than Ukraine’s, and when the money runs out, the population could be forced to turn to arms – which means they would end up in the same state of demoralization that Ukraine is currently in.
In these conditions, the mere fact that there is a debate about which country has the advantage in this war shows a remarkable reversal of expectations.
From the beginning, even after the Ukrainians repelled the first wave of the Russian invasion, pessimists believed that time favored Russia, larger and wealthier, and whose army had more experience in slow, attritional wars.
„In 2022, all analysts assumed that Putin and Russia would be better prepared to withstand a long war against a smaller Ukraine,” Barros said. „This assumption has been invalidated. The prolongation of the conflict now hurts the Russians more than the Ukrainians,” he concluded.
T.D.