Russia's Victory in Ukraine Remains Elusive
For all of the Trump administration’s insistence that diplomacy is the key to ending Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine, the future of that country and the shape of an eventual settlement is being decided on the ground militarily.
While independent analysts say the overall strategic picture remains favorable to Russia — a point which Moscow is eager to drive home in public messaging, as the United States mulls abandoning peace talks and withdrawing its support for Kyiv — the defender generally has the advantage in military operations.
Ukraine has been staving off disaster in the field with creativity, innovation, and courage of arms, but the data paints a desultory picture of its prospects. Kyiv is struggling to assemble the number of frontline soldiers it needs for effective defense — let alone offensive operations, which require far more resources and carry much greater risks.
Russia has an estimated 620,000 combatants in the field, according to Ukrainian military intelligence. Moscow says it is adding 40,000 new recruits per month — more than it needs to replace the 30,000 or more it loses on the battlefield each month. The Kremlin says it plans to increase its total military strength to 1.5 million in uniform.
“The Russian military is reconstituting and growing at a faster rate than most analysts had anticipated,” Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, told a Senate committee in April.
The Kremlin continues to unleash dozens of drones and missiles against Ukrainian cities nightly, and while the defenders are often able to shoot down a large portion of these, each one that gets through is costly. Russia is set to produce thousands of the most commonly used type of attack drone, the Geran, this year.
Nevertheless, resistance continues. The key road-and-rail hub of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine has yet to fall to Russia. On that front — one of the centers of gravity for the war — Russia has advanced a mere 25 miles at a cost of tens of thousands of soldiers, after nearly a year of fighting. The city has been almost utterly destroyed, with one Ukrainian soldier who was deployed there recently telling Rolling Stone that “it feels more like a zombie apocalypse than real life.”
