von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
3:12 minutes.
Detailed follow up observations of the attack on Russian oil refineries.
Last edited:
WAR RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE - Consolidated Thread
- Thread starter danielboon
- Start date
3:12 minutes.
Detailed follow up observations of the attack on Russian oil refineries.
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
22:33 minutes
6:06 minutes
Ukraine sets record of 28 ships attacked over 24 hours.
Last edited:
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Ukraine reported today that Russian gasoline production is down 65 percent.
et2
TB Fanatic
I guess the mental green midget is doing fine without Americas help. Screw the bastard. Biden and PTB proxy. Let him defend his own With his own money and equipment. He’s not part of NATO.
And he’s the same POS that helped Biden impeach and go after Trump during Biden’s run for president. The fact that Trump gives him the time of day … tells you a lot. Trump is softening on the piano playing comedic pervert.
He sounds like a demonic lizard
And he’s the same POS that helped Biden impeach and go after Trump during Biden’s run for president. The fact that Trump gives him the time of day … tells you a lot. Trump is softening on the piano playing comedic pervert.
He sounds like a demonic lizard
et2
TB Fanatic
Wait
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
2:40 minutes
Another successful attack on Russian oil refineries.
Last edited:
jward
passin' thru
twz.com
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
Ukraine claims that 28 Russian vessels were hit by aerial drones in the Sea of Azov on Saturday. The strikes are the latest in a campaign that Ukrainian authorities assert has resulted in nearly 80 Russian vessels, mostly so-called shadow fleet oil tankers, being attacked in that body of water on a daily basis since July 6.
As a result of these attacks, “Russia temporarily stopped shipping through the Don-Azov Channel, a navigable waterway linking the Don River with the Sea of Azov,” Reuters reported, citing three grain export industry sources.
The move came after 13 Russian vessels, including 10 tankers, were attacked in this body of water on Friday. Market analysts noted to Reuters that about 25% of wheat exports from Russia, the world’s largest exporter of the grain, pass through the Sea of Azov.
A satellite image of a burning Russian tanker near the Kerch Bridge in the Sea of Azov taken July 8. (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor)
A satellite image of a burning Russian tanker in the Sea of Azov near the Kerch Bridge taken July 9. (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor)
“Overnight on 11 July, the Birds of the Unmanned Systems Forces hit 21 tankers, 4 tugs, 2 cargo vessels, and 1 special-purpose vessel in the Sea of Azov,” Ukraine’s 414th Separate Unmanned Strike Aviation System Brigade, known as “Magyar’s Birds,” stated on X. The cutting-edge unit is named for Ukraine’s drone force commander Robert Brovdi, also known as Magyar.
In addition to striking the ships, Magyar’s Birds claimed to also have hit “53 legitimate military targets were engaged deep inside the enemy’s rear in Crimea and the southern part of the temporarily occupied territories, including fleet assets and energy infrastructure. Operation ‘Crimean Switch Off’ has no end date.”
The shadow tanker fleet was engaged by drone pilots from a wide array of units, the brigade added.
“The technological humiliation of the empire continues,” Magyar’s Birds proclaimed. “It will fall because of Crimea.”
TWZ cannot independently verify the claims; however, many videos have emerged on social media purporting to show the results of these attacks. Magyar’s Birds has released six compilations of them.
Roy Gardiner, a former Canadian military officer who is part of the Defense Tech For Ukraine collective and is an expert on Ukrainian drone warfare, surmised that the attacks are by the FP-2 drone.
FP-1 and FP-2 – Drones that inflict pain on the Russian rear! | Weapons with @StarskyUA
“It’s the only UAV available in large numbers and with the range to carry that much explosive, other than the long-range AN-196 Liutyi, which is a lot more expensive and illogical to use for this mission,” Gardiner, who uses the @GrandpaRoy2 handle on X, told us.
УКРАЇНСЬКІ ДРОНИ СТАЛИ НОСІЯМИ РАКЕТ! Деталі від українських розробників / ТСН.Тиждень
That range gives Ukrainian forces fire control over virtually all of the Sea of Azov, a body of water north of the Black Sea. The videos indicate this is made possible by high-speed satellite data links allowing for man-in-the-loop operations at great distances. This has enabled Ukraine’s sea drones since their arrival but the miniaturization of the technology has now allowed for large-scale use on one-way attack munitions.
Sea of Azov (Google Earth)
In addition to the aerial drones striking these tankers, Ukraine’s SBU state security bureau used Sea Baby sea drones to attack a Russian tanker in the Black Sea on June 8. As we have frequently reported, Ukraine’s naval campaign has focused overwhelmingly on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Many successful attacks have been recorded against Black Sea Fleet vessels and facilities, forcing the general evacuation of Russian naval assets from occupied Crimea and to bases in Russia proper.
The Sea of Azov campaign has some Russian milbloggers chiding Moscow for not doing enough to protect these tankers.
“The ‘Military Informant’ Telegram channel complained that the defenseless manner in which the tankers had travelled had become in effect a shooting gallery for Ukrainian drone operators, with no cover from a Black Sea Fleet, which could nowadays barely defend itself,” the BBC recently noted.
The Kremlin is certainly paying attention to Ukraine’s targeting of refineries, oil depots, ports, ships and other energy infrastructure.
There’s good reason for Putin to be concerned.
“Russian gasoline output fell to a level equivalent to only around 65% of the seasonal average consumption after Ukrainian drone attacks led to stoppages at large oil refineries,” Reuters reported on Friday, citing “two industry sources and Reuters calculations.”
As a result of the Ukrainian attacks, Russia – long a major oil exporter – is now turning to imports to cover the gap and meet the demands.
“Supplies of gasoline and diesel from Belarus to Russia hit a monthly record in June, while industry sources said last week that Russia had started seaborne from India,” Reuters added. “Traders said that up to 6,000 tons of gasoline per day are delivered from neighboring Belarus to Russia. Stockpiles are also being tapped.”
Russia is also taking the drastic step of considering bans on exports of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel.
All this comes as both Ukraine and Russia are jockeying for territory and influence amid a slow-churning, on-again, off-again effort by President Donald Trump to end the conflict.
Ukraine’s success in targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure and isolating Crimea has likely had an effect on Trump, who has repeatedly changed his stance on which side he favors.
As we recently reported, Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a remarkably warm bilateral meeting at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, earlier this week. So much so that the American leader promised his counterpart licenses to manufacture Patriot air defense system interceptors, something Zelensky has sought for years without success.
Ukraine continues to struggle badly to fend off Russian ballistic missile barrages and remains overmatched in terms of troops and equipment on the battlefield, where fighting has ground to a virtual standstill. Despite that, Kyiv is proving that asymmetric efforts like the Sea of Azov campaign are helping to offset Moscow’s advantages.
Contact the author: howard@twz.com
Ukraine Claims Scores Of Russian Ships Struck In Sea Of Azov
Ukraine Claims Scores Of Russian Ships Struck In Sea Of Azov
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
Ukraine claims that 28 Russian vessels were hit by aerial drones in the Sea of Azov on Saturday. The strikes are the latest in a campaign that Ukrainian authorities assert has resulted in nearly 80 Russian vessels, mostly so-called shadow fleet oil tankers, being attacked in that body of water on a daily basis since July 6.
As a result of these attacks, “Russia temporarily stopped shipping through the Don-Azov Channel, a navigable waterway linking the Don River with the Sea of Azov,” Reuters reported, citing three grain export industry sources.
The move came after 13 Russian vessels, including 10 tankers, were attacked in this body of water on Friday. Market analysts noted to Reuters that about 25% of wheat exports from Russia, the world’s largest exporter of the grain, pass through the Sea of Azov.
The Sea of Azov campaign is part of much wider Ukrainian efforts to isolate the Crimean peninsula as well as strike at Russia’s energy infrastructure to damage its economy and reduce its ability to wage war. As we have previously reported, these attacks are inflicting pain on Russian forces in Crimea. Also often striking very deep into Russia, they are also having a devastating effect on fuel supplies across the country. In addition, the attacks are helping to halt Moscow’s gains and pave the way for Ukrainian advances.
“Overnight on 11 July, the Birds of the Unmanned Systems Forces hit 21 tankers, 4 tugs, 2 cargo vessels, and 1 special-purpose vessel in the Sea of Azov,” Ukraine’s 414th Separate Unmanned Strike Aviation System Brigade, known as “Magyar’s Birds,” stated on X. The cutting-edge unit is named for Ukraine’s drone force commander Robert Brovdi, also known as Magyar.
In addition to striking the ships, Magyar’s Birds claimed to also have hit “53 legitimate military targets were engaged deep inside the enemy’s rear in Crimea and the southern part of the temporarily occupied territories, including fleet assets and energy infrastructure. Operation ‘Crimean Switch Off’ has no end date.”
The shadow tanker fleet was engaged by drone pilots from a wide array of units, the brigade added.
“The technological humiliation of the empire continues,” Magyar’s Birds proclaimed. “It will fall because of Crimea.”
TWZ cannot independently verify the claims; however, many videos have emerged on social media purporting to show the results of these attacks. Magyar’s Birds has released six compilations of them.
The brigade began releasing videos of these strikes on July 6. This first one shows two ships being hit in a compilation of videos showing strikes on targets mostly on Crimea. The targets included S-400 air defense systems, radars and an oil depot.
The next day, July 7, Magyar’s Birds released a video that opened with a wide view of almost two dozen tankers lined up in the Sea of Azov. The video then cuts to show several of those vessels being struck and burning. The unit claimed eight tankers, a cargo ship and a ferry were hit.️ Don’t joke about fuel shipments to Crimea. We warned you.
Two fuel tankers carrying gasoline from Taganrog to Crimea were hunted down in the Sea of Azov; on land – two S-400 “Triumf” air defense systems, an oil depot burning in Kerch, and a Nebo-U radar.
During the night of… pic.twitter.com/lRCPJJ2wKz
— 414 Magyar's Birds (@414magyarbirds) July 6, 2026
On July 8, Magyar’s Birds claimed nine more Russian tankers were attacked.
Magyar’s Birds released another video on July 9 claiming 14 Russian ships were hit overnight.
Friday, July 10, Magyar’s Birds claimed strikes on 10 tankers, a cargo vessel, a ferry and a sea tug.
In addition to the videos released by the unit, others emerged on social media showing the aftermath of these attacks.
️Consequences of the Ukrainian drone strike on the Russian dry cargo ship FAVORI (Volgo-Don type, Project 1565A) in the Sea of Azov pic.twitter.com/MCfwC5fmPa
— MilitaryNewsUA (@front_ukrainian) July 10, 2026
Magyar’s Birds doesn’t name the types of drones being used, but the video displays show they are from Fire Point, which makes several kamikaze drones as well as the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile.
Roy Gardiner, a former Canadian military officer who is part of the Defense Tech For Ukraine collective and is an expert on Ukrainian drone warfare, surmised that the attacks are by the FP-2 drone.
FP-1 and FP-2 – Drones that inflict pain on the Russian rear! | Weapons with @StarskyUA
“It’s the only UAV available in large numbers and with the range to carry that much explosive, other than the long-range AN-196 Liutyi, which is a lot more expensive and illogical to use for this mission,” Gardiner, who uses the @GrandpaRoy2 handle on X, told us.
Fire Point co-owner Denis Shtilerman recently told the TSN media outlet that the company has increased the warhead of its FP-2 strike drones to 200 kilograms. A change in the wing design enabled the drone to achieve a flight range of up to 370 kilometers with those warheads, he claimed.
УКРАЇНСЬКІ ДРОНИ СТАЛИ НОСІЯМИ РАКЕТ! Деталі від українських розробників / ТСН.Тиждень
That range gives Ukrainian forces fire control over virtually all of the Sea of Azov, a body of water north of the Black Sea. The videos indicate this is made possible by high-speed satellite data links allowing for man-in-the-loop operations at great distances. This has enabled Ukraine’s sea drones since their arrival but the miniaturization of the technology has now allowed for large-scale use on one-way attack munitions.
In addition to the aerial drones striking these tankers, Ukraine’s SBU state security bureau used Sea Baby sea drones to attack a Russian tanker in the Black Sea on June 8. As we have frequently reported, Ukraine’s naval campaign has focused overwhelmingly on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Many successful attacks have been recorded against Black Sea Fleet vessels and facilities, forcing the general evacuation of Russian naval assets from occupied Crimea and to bases in Russia proper.
The Sea of Azov campaign has some Russian milbloggers chiding Moscow for not doing enough to protect these tankers.
“The ‘Military Informant’ Telegram channel complained that the defenseless manner in which the tankers had travelled had become in effect a shooting gallery for Ukrainian drone operators, with no cover from a Black Sea Fleet, which could nowadays barely defend itself,” the BBC recently noted.
The Kremlin is certainly paying attention to Ukraine’s targeting of refineries, oil depots, ports, ships and other energy infrastructure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “is concerned enough to address the fuel shortage publicly on state TV, insisting the Ukrainian attacks are ‘obviously creating problems’ but insisting ‘it’s not critical,'” BBC explained.
There’s good reason for Putin to be concerned.
“Russian gasoline output fell to a level equivalent to only around 65% of the seasonal average consumption after Ukrainian drone attacks led to stoppages at large oil refineries,” Reuters reported on Friday, citing “two industry sources and Reuters calculations.”
As a result of the Ukrainian attacks, Russia – long a major oil exporter – is now turning to imports to cover the gap and meet the demands.
“Supplies of gasoline and diesel from Belarus to Russia hit a monthly record in June, while industry sources said last week that Russia had started seaborne from India,” Reuters added. “Traders said that up to 6,000 tons of gasoline per day are delivered from neighboring Belarus to Russia. Stockpiles are also being tapped.”
Russia is also taking the drastic step of considering bans on exports of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel.
All this comes as both Ukraine and Russia are jockeying for territory and influence amid a slow-churning, on-again, off-again effort by President Donald Trump to end the conflict.
Ukraine’s success in targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure and isolating Crimea has likely had an effect on Trump, who has repeatedly changed his stance on which side he favors.
As we recently reported, Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a remarkably warm bilateral meeting at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, earlier this week. So much so that the American leader promised his counterpart licenses to manufacture Patriot air defense system interceptors, something Zelensky has sought for years without success.
Ukraine continues to struggle badly to fend off Russian ballistic missile barrages and remains overmatched in terms of troops and equipment on the battlefield, where fighting has ground to a virtual standstill. Despite that, Kyiv is proving that asymmetric efforts like the Sea of Azov campaign are helping to offset Moscow’s advantages.
Contact the author: howard@twz.com
Ukraine Claims Scores Of Russian Ships Struck In Sea Of Azov
jward
passin' thru
Aki H Heikkinen reposted
Тетяна Кагітіна NAFO member
@tatyanaodesssa
6h
Reports circulating today claim that Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), under Vasyl Maliuk, carried out one of the most significant covert operations of the war in response to Russia’s latest missile attack on Kyiv.
According to these reports, the operation targeted Russian strategic aviation deep inside Russia, allegedly damaging multiple bombers and capturing several Russian military pilots.
If confirmed, it would mark one of the most ambitious intelligence operations of the modern era, demonstrating Ukraine’s ability to strike far beyond the front line.
The full details have not been independently verified.
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
2:22 minutes
Russian training for an advanced anti-drone weapon.
Last edited:
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
4:46 minutes
The attacks on Russian ships continues.
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
19:48 minutes
A compilation of attacks on Russian ships. Situation in Crimea worsens.
Last edited:
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Russians facing the reality of Putin's war.
14:05 minutes
View: https://youtu.be/_ocnug2N6v4?is=QnJBH_uF6Kl-t1YL
14:05 minutes
Posted for fair use......
warontherocks.com
Greg Whisler and Michael Kofman
July 14, 2026
Joseph Stalin famously said that quantity has a quality of its own. Yet the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War shows both the benefits and the eventual limitations of that approach. As the quantitative advantage grew on the Russian side, its ability to employ force at scale decreased. The resulting dynamic became a paradox: As Moscow fielded more forces, the value of that mass steadily diminished. The quality that the Russians expected to come from attaining quantitative advantages did not appear on the battlefield but was, over time, offset by Ukrainian adaptation, technology, and Western capital. Russian force expansion offered a window of opportunity to attain battlefield gains, but this advantage proved indecisive, eventually yielding diminishing returns. Russian mass ran into an effective counter: mass precision mixed with traditional capabilities (land mines, prepared defensive positions, and artillery), as Ukrainian units invested in drones and other capabilities that minimized the traditional advantages offered by manpower overmatch.
One of Russia’s main successes in the war was its ability to establish a recruitment pipeline and dramatically expand the military, having grown its deployed force by several times since early 2022. Russia began the war with one of the smallest armies it had fielded in well over 100 years. Following its initially disastrous invasion attempt in 2022, the Russian military generated a vastly larger ground force to conduct operations in and around Ukraine, growing to over 700,000 personnel. Despite the high casualties taken, by some accounts approaching 500,000 killed in action, the Russian military grew significantly over the course of the war.
And yet, despite impressive wartime expansion, sustaining a manpower advantage through most years of the war, Moscow has been unable to convert this into significant battlefield gains or major breakthroughs.
Why?
First, cycles of technological innovation and tactical adaptation led to greater dispersal on the battlefield, negating much of the traditional advantage derived from superiority in manpower and materiel. Second, the Russian military chose to double down on a cost-ineffective approach to conducting offensives, assuming that quantitative advantage would eventually result in increasing battlefield gains.
We seek here to explain how Russia expanded and changed the structure of its force, as well as why it failed to deliver the results the Kremlin and General Staff hoped for. However, it is likely that much of this expanded force is here to stay, and that one legacy of this war will be Russia’s return to a larger, more mobilization-dependent force structure after three decades of focusing on relatively small, high-readiness ground forces, underinvesting in reserves, and its mobilization system.
What the future holds for this expanded military is uncertain, but planners across NATO ought to take note of the transition and its implications for future contingencies with Russia. Despite its inability to attain operationally significant breakthroughs in Ukraine, the Russian military invested heavily in assimilating tactical drones and deep-strike capabilities. After the war, Russia will deploy a much larger ground force on the border of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland, including new and significantly expanded precision strike capabilities that give Moscow more flexibility and could prove a challenge for NATO member states if they have not sufficiently learned from the battlefield experiences of this war.
The Russian military optimized battalion tactical groups to employ contract personnel in an armed conflict or a local war of a relatively short duration. By staffing a unit with contract soldiers, the Kremlin could avoid the politically thorny issue of employing conscripts, which, because of political realities, Russia would probably only use in a time of a major, declared war. Moscow also did not develop a system of personnel replacement for this small force structure, leading to a force ill-suited to attempt the occupation of one of Europe’s largest countries. Moreover, the military staffed Russian maneuver regiments and brigades at between 70 and 90 percent, which — after exempting conscripts (roughly one-third of their manpower) from combat — was adequate to organize only two reinforced battalions out of their four-maneuver-battalion structure. Even so, in several cases, the parent formation was only able to fill one battalion tactical group, leaving the second understaffed. The combat support and service support elements of the battalion tactical groups could be as large, if not larger, than the infantry component, further highlighting that Moscow did design them for large-scale, intensive offensive operations or the occupation of large territory.
The invasion force, surprisingly, lacked a reserve. At first, Moscow appeared to be preparing to use reservists in 2021, ahead of the invasion. The Ministry of Defense announced a surge of resources for the “Mobilization Personnel Reserve” or Boevoy Armeisky Reserv Strany that summer, and appeared to be activating it. The Russian reservist system had been under consideration in various forms since 2006, but remained chronically underfunded and buried under myriad other priorities. This system, similar to the reserve systems in many Western armies, called for volunteers to sign contracts as reservists who would train regularly and could plug into their assigned unit quickly. The program struggled to get off the ground because of low pay, although several thousand recruits still signed and were activated for training in several military districts, including exercises practicing the generation of reserve infantry units. Ultimately, Moscow did not include the reservists from this program in the initial invasion force, either because it could not produce the necessary numbers or because Russian leadership thought it unnecessary given their assumption of a speedy victory.
The only mobilization that did occur prior to the invasion was a general mobilization in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics), declared on Feb. 19. This process generated at least 20 new infantry regiments and another 20–30 infantry battalions, augmenting the Russian invasion force by about 20 to 25 percent. These units proved to be a vital infusion of infantry for Moscow, although still inadequate given the limited capabilities of the mobilized units, Russia’s ambitious territorial objectives, and the scale of Russian losses in the first few months of the war. Titularly, the Russian military organized these units into the 1st and 2nd Army Corps, subordinated to Russia’s 8th Combined Arms Army. In the first two years, Moscow also offset a percentage of its battlefield casualties onto these mobilized formations, which were generated from occupied Ukrainian regions.
By the summer of 2022, after months of scrounging for personnel, forming militia and volunteer units, using private contractors and reservists from the Donbas, and with the tattered remnants from the initial invasion, Moscow fielded a hodge-podge of units with low morale that was too weak to sustain offensive operations. Russian units were fighting as company tactical groups and weak ‘breakthrough groups,’ which could not overcome what were in effect larger Ukrainian formations. At this point of the war Ukraine held a manpower advantage, forcing Russia to rely on concentrated artillery fires to compensate for the shortage of infantry. This tactic worked in the spring, as fire superiority forced Ukrainian forces to disperse, at times giving Russian units a significant localized advantage. However, by the summer this approach, too, ran out of steam as the United States introduced High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems that disrupted Russian logistics and worsened Russian ammunition shortfalls. It was at this point that the Russian military formed its first large, newly generated “regular” unit, the 3rd Army Corps, out of a maw of recruits and equipment pulled from storage.
For all its faults, and the rust in the mobilization system it exposed, the partial mobilization proved vital to stabilizing Russia’s defensive lines and giving the military desperately needed mass, even if of relatively low overall quality. Russia used these newly formed infantry units to shore up defensive positions and augment existing units, arriving in time to halt Ukraine’s advance near the Luhansk Oblast administrative border in northeastern Ukraine (after the Kharkiv offensive) and bolster Russia’s defenses along the Dnieper River and across central Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblast. This began the process of Russian force expansion during the war, which would eventually grow to over 700,000 deployed personnel in and around Ukraine. It represented Moscow’s political commitment to a ‘long war,’ recognizing that it would require not just partial mobilization, but militarization of the economy as well. Alongside this effort, the Russian military began to pull large amounts of equipment out of stocks, establishing a robust pipeline for equipment repair and refurbishment to kit out the growing military with tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and artillery.
While Moscow intended the partial mobilization to be a short-term remedy to the force size problem, at the same time, it rolled out an ambitious new long-term military expansion — a reaction to burgeoning requirements in Ukraine as well as the accession of Finland, and later Sweden, into NATO. At the December 2022 Ministry of Defense Collegium meeting, then-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Putin had approved a 50 percent increase over the armed forces’ pre-war end strength — to 1.5 million — and that Russian ground and aviation forces would undergo a major expansion. As part of this, the military would create at least 14 new divisions, many on the basis of existing brigades. These new measures represented the most significant Russian military expansion plan in decades. How realistic they were is another matter, but it is clear that Moscow sees the war in Ukraine and NATO’s reaction to its aggression as requiring a change in force posture.
In light of the successful recruitment on the heels of the partial mobilization, 2023 proved to be Moscow’s most successful year of the war in terms of expansion. Based on our calculations, the General Staff created two new combined-arms armies, two new motorized rifle divisions, and 27 new maneuver brigades and regiments. The military also expanded the 31st Separate Landing Assault Brigade into the 104th Landing Assault Division and filled out another nine divisions with several additional maneuver regiments, largely executing previous pre-war expansion plans. Moreover, the military formed new specialized assault detachments or companies and extra reserve rifle battalions within maneuver regiments and brigades. Russian units were also given new types of assault companies comprised of convicts, called Storm-Z, and then Storm-V, based in part on the Wagner Group’s experience. A motorized rifle regiment that initially deployed into Ukraine with two battalion tactical groups may have had about 500–600 infantry on hand. After this augmentation, the same regiment could have as many as 2,000 infantrymen. This began the steady process of Russian forces orienting around different types of assault detachments, with some of the tactics informed by the Wagner Group’s experience. By 2023, regiment and brigade commanders had far more personnel to intensify offensive operations and replace combat losses.
Continued.....
A Return to Mass: Russian Force Expansion in the War with Ukraine
Joseph Stalin famously said that quantity has a quality of its own. Yet the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War shows both the benefits and the eventual
warontherocks.com
A Return to Mass: Russian Force Expansion in the War with Ukraine
Greg Whisler and Michael Kofman
July 14, 2026
Joseph Stalin famously said that quantity has a quality of its own. Yet the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War shows both the benefits and the eventual limitations of that approach. As the quantitative advantage grew on the Russian side, its ability to employ force at scale decreased. The resulting dynamic became a paradox: As Moscow fielded more forces, the value of that mass steadily diminished. The quality that the Russians expected to come from attaining quantitative advantages did not appear on the battlefield but was, over time, offset by Ukrainian adaptation, technology, and Western capital. Russian force expansion offered a window of opportunity to attain battlefield gains, but this advantage proved indecisive, eventually yielding diminishing returns. Russian mass ran into an effective counter: mass precision mixed with traditional capabilities (land mines, prepared defensive positions, and artillery), as Ukrainian units invested in drones and other capabilities that minimized the traditional advantages offered by manpower overmatch.
One of Russia’s main successes in the war was its ability to establish a recruitment pipeline and dramatically expand the military, having grown its deployed force by several times since early 2022. Russia began the war with one of the smallest armies it had fielded in well over 100 years. Following its initially disastrous invasion attempt in 2022, the Russian military generated a vastly larger ground force to conduct operations in and around Ukraine, growing to over 700,000 personnel. Despite the high casualties taken, by some accounts approaching 500,000 killed in action, the Russian military grew significantly over the course of the war.
And yet, despite impressive wartime expansion, sustaining a manpower advantage through most years of the war, Moscow has been unable to convert this into significant battlefield gains or major breakthroughs.
Why?
First, cycles of technological innovation and tactical adaptation led to greater dispersal on the battlefield, negating much of the traditional advantage derived from superiority in manpower and materiel. Second, the Russian military chose to double down on a cost-ineffective approach to conducting offensives, assuming that quantitative advantage would eventually result in increasing battlefield gains.
We seek here to explain how Russia expanded and changed the structure of its force, as well as why it failed to deliver the results the Kremlin and General Staff hoped for. However, it is likely that much of this expanded force is here to stay, and that one legacy of this war will be Russia’s return to a larger, more mobilization-dependent force structure after three decades of focusing on relatively small, high-readiness ground forces, underinvesting in reserves, and its mobilization system.
What the future holds for this expanded military is uncertain, but planners across NATO ought to take note of the transition and its implications for future contingencies with Russia. Despite its inability to attain operationally significant breakthroughs in Ukraine, the Russian military invested heavily in assimilating tactical drones and deep-strike capabilities. After the war, Russia will deploy a much larger ground force on the border of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland, including new and significantly expanded precision strike capabilities that give Moscow more flexibility and could prove a challenge for NATO member states if they have not sufficiently learned from the battlefield experiences of this war.
The Invasion: The Wrong Force for the Wrong War
Much is known about the flaws of Russia’s invasion plan and the problems Russian forces faced upon encountering Ukrainian resistance. Although Moscow fielded a large, mechanized combined-arms force, it was short of infantry and proved too small for the task of occupying a country the size of Ukraine. For the invasion, Russia committed nearly all of its peacetime force structure: more than 150 battalion tactical groups. The military designed these task-organized, reinforced combined arms battalions with various supporting attachments from the parent brigade or regiment and made them the basis of Russia’s peacetime force construct — an attempt to balance manpower constraints, Russia’s expansive geography, and the greater threat of smaller-scale contingencies along the Russian periphery.The Russian military optimized battalion tactical groups to employ contract personnel in an armed conflict or a local war of a relatively short duration. By staffing a unit with contract soldiers, the Kremlin could avoid the politically thorny issue of employing conscripts, which, because of political realities, Russia would probably only use in a time of a major, declared war. Moscow also did not develop a system of personnel replacement for this small force structure, leading to a force ill-suited to attempt the occupation of one of Europe’s largest countries. Moreover, the military staffed Russian maneuver regiments and brigades at between 70 and 90 percent, which — after exempting conscripts (roughly one-third of their manpower) from combat — was adequate to organize only two reinforced battalions out of their four-maneuver-battalion structure. Even so, in several cases, the parent formation was only able to fill one battalion tactical group, leaving the second understaffed. The combat support and service support elements of the battalion tactical groups could be as large, if not larger, than the infantry component, further highlighting that Moscow did design them for large-scale, intensive offensive operations or the occupation of large territory.
The invasion force, surprisingly, lacked a reserve. At first, Moscow appeared to be preparing to use reservists in 2021, ahead of the invasion. The Ministry of Defense announced a surge of resources for the “Mobilization Personnel Reserve” or Boevoy Armeisky Reserv Strany that summer, and appeared to be activating it. The Russian reservist system had been under consideration in various forms since 2006, but remained chronically underfunded and buried under myriad other priorities. This system, similar to the reserve systems in many Western armies, called for volunteers to sign contracts as reservists who would train regularly and could plug into their assigned unit quickly. The program struggled to get off the ground because of low pay, although several thousand recruits still signed and were activated for training in several military districts, including exercises practicing the generation of reserve infantry units. Ultimately, Moscow did not include the reservists from this program in the initial invasion force, either because it could not produce the necessary numbers or because Russian leadership thought it unnecessary given their assumption of a speedy victory.
The only mobilization that did occur prior to the invasion was a general mobilization in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics), declared on Feb. 19. This process generated at least 20 new infantry regiments and another 20–30 infantry battalions, augmenting the Russian invasion force by about 20 to 25 percent. These units proved to be a vital infusion of infantry for Moscow, although still inadequate given the limited capabilities of the mobilized units, Russia’s ambitious territorial objectives, and the scale of Russian losses in the first few months of the war. Titularly, the Russian military organized these units into the 1st and 2nd Army Corps, subordinated to Russia’s 8th Combined Arms Army. In the first two years, Moscow also offset a percentage of its battlefield casualties onto these mobilized formations, which were generated from occupied Ukrainian regions.
Initial Defeat and the Mad Scramble for Replacements
With the expectation of a relatively short conflict, Moscow had not planned a system of personnel replacement. Instead, rapid decimation of the invasion force in the spring of 2022 compelled a desperate search for replacements. At this point, Moscow called up reservists in the ‘Combat army reserve of the country’, but strangely did not use them to replace losses in active-duty units. Instead, the Russian General staff used these reservists form new infantry battalions called “detachments.” Moscow turned to private military companies like the well-known Wagner Group, and formed a variety of regionally-based volunteer and militia units for operations in Ukraine. Russian regions funded and stood up these units, often employing their own resources to form them.By the summer of 2022, after months of scrounging for personnel, forming militia and volunteer units, using private contractors and reservists from the Donbas, and with the tattered remnants from the initial invasion, Moscow fielded a hodge-podge of units with low morale that was too weak to sustain offensive operations. Russian units were fighting as company tactical groups and weak ‘breakthrough groups,’ which could not overcome what were in effect larger Ukrainian formations. At this point of the war Ukraine held a manpower advantage, forcing Russia to rely on concentrated artillery fires to compensate for the shortage of infantry. This tactic worked in the spring, as fire superiority forced Ukrainian forces to disperse, at times giving Russian units a significant localized advantage. However, by the summer this approach, too, ran out of steam as the United States introduced High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems that disrupted Russian logistics and worsened Russian ammunition shortfalls. It was at this point that the Russian military formed its first large, newly generated “regular” unit, the 3rd Army Corps, out of a maw of recruits and equipment pulled from storage.
Fall 2022: Partial Mobilization
In September 2022, after Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast, the Russian military’s personnel situation was glaringly dire, so much so that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists in September 2022, which he had clearly hoped to avoid. Over the next three months — and despite widespread problems associated with the call-up, training, and equipping of the reservists — the Russian military organized about 70 reserve tank, artillery, and infantry regiments, four sapper regiments, and several dozen separate infantry, antitank, and artillery battalions. Using rough personnel numbers for each type of unit (including an average of about 2,400 troops for each infantry regiment), these units probably accounted for roughly 170,000 personnel out of the total mobilization levy. The General Staff used the remaining 130,000 reservists to bring units already in Ukraine to full strength, filling out existing regiments and brigades that initially deployed only with a partial table of equipment.For all its faults, and the rust in the mobilization system it exposed, the partial mobilization proved vital to stabilizing Russia’s defensive lines and giving the military desperately needed mass, even if of relatively low overall quality. Russia used these newly formed infantry units to shore up defensive positions and augment existing units, arriving in time to halt Ukraine’s advance near the Luhansk Oblast administrative border in northeastern Ukraine (after the Kharkiv offensive) and bolster Russia’s defenses along the Dnieper River and across central Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblast. This began the process of Russian force expansion during the war, which would eventually grow to over 700,000 deployed personnel in and around Ukraine. It represented Moscow’s political commitment to a ‘long war,’ recognizing that it would require not just partial mobilization, but militarization of the economy as well. Alongside this effort, the Russian military began to pull large amounts of equipment out of stocks, establishing a robust pipeline for equipment repair and refurbishment to kit out the growing military with tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and artillery.
While Moscow intended the partial mobilization to be a short-term remedy to the force size problem, at the same time, it rolled out an ambitious new long-term military expansion — a reaction to burgeoning requirements in Ukraine as well as the accession of Finland, and later Sweden, into NATO. At the December 2022 Ministry of Defense Collegium meeting, then-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Putin had approved a 50 percent increase over the armed forces’ pre-war end strength — to 1.5 million — and that Russian ground and aviation forces would undergo a major expansion. As part of this, the military would create at least 14 new divisions, many on the basis of existing brigades. These new measures represented the most significant Russian military expansion plan in decades. How realistic they were is another matter, but it is clear that Moscow sees the war in Ukraine and NATO’s reaction to its aggression as requiring a change in force posture.
2023: Surging Force Expansion
The political outcry that surrounded the abruptly announced autumn 2022 partial mobilization — resulting in tens of thousands of Russian citizens fleeing the country in tandem with the Kremlin’s continued opposition to using conscripts in Ukraine — left Moscow with a single viable option for additional force expansion while replacing losses in Ukraine: contract soldier recruitment. In 2023, the Ministry of Defense planned to recruit an additional 420,000 contract soldiers for the war. In contrast, the Russian Armed Forces had no more than 400,000 contract soldiers annually in the years running up to the war. The military had never been able to reach its stated goal of close to 500,000 contract soldiers, which highlighted just how ambitious this new 2023 target was, particularly for a wartime recruiting effort. When added to the newly mobilized 300,000 personnel, the additional 420,000 were intended to not only sustain the force in Ukraine but also support significant new force growth. Russian officials announced that the armed forces recruited 420,000 contract soldiers and accepted another 80,000 volunteers in 2023. Even if these numbers were artificially inflated through various forms of double counting, we assess that Moscow came close to meeting its recruitment plans for 2023.In light of the successful recruitment on the heels of the partial mobilization, 2023 proved to be Moscow’s most successful year of the war in terms of expansion. Based on our calculations, the General Staff created two new combined-arms armies, two new motorized rifle divisions, and 27 new maneuver brigades and regiments. The military also expanded the 31st Separate Landing Assault Brigade into the 104th Landing Assault Division and filled out another nine divisions with several additional maneuver regiments, largely executing previous pre-war expansion plans. Moreover, the military formed new specialized assault detachments or companies and extra reserve rifle battalions within maneuver regiments and brigades. Russian units were also given new types of assault companies comprised of convicts, called Storm-Z, and then Storm-V, based in part on the Wagner Group’s experience. A motorized rifle regiment that initially deployed into Ukraine with two battalion tactical groups may have had about 500–600 infantry on hand. After this augmentation, the same regiment could have as many as 2,000 infantrymen. This began the steady process of Russian forces orienting around different types of assault detachments, with some of the tactics informed by the Wagner Group’s experience. By 2023, regiment and brigade commanders had far more personnel to intensify offensive operations and replace combat losses.
Continued.....
Continued.....
Similarly, the commanders of the different Russian troop groupings in Ukraine had much more mass to conduct a broad offensive. By the end of 2023, Russia fielded more than 800 maneuver battalions in and around Ukraine, roughly four times the size of the initial invasion force. Of course, constant combat losses meant that few infantry units were actually at authorized strength until they were newly formed or replenished. Many of the newly formed units did not have their standardized table of equipment either. Even so, the sheer growth in a single year was massive. In December, Putin stated that Russian forces in the “zone of the Special Military Operation” numbered 617,000 personnel — roughly three times the size of the invasion force — highlighting the twin successes of mobilization and contract soldier recruitment. Putin also authorized an increase in the armed forces’ authorized strength to 1.32 million troops, reflecting the trajectory toward the 1.5 million goal. This overall force growth gave Moscow the confidence to resume large-scale offensive operations by October 2023, after the failure of Ukraine’s summer offensive.
In addition to the burden of creating new units, the new district headquarters also became the basis for a new Northern Grouping of troops that assumed responsibility for Ukraine’s northern border and began offensive operations into Kharkiv Oblast that May. Moscow’s stated goal was to create a buffer zone, but the more practical military objective was to stretch out Ukrainian forces on a longer front. The Northern Grouping, a mix of brand-new units and some deployed from other groupings, struggled to juggle its casualty-intensive operational assignments with surging manpower requirements to fill out the district’s force structure. The formation of the new 68th, 69th, and 71st Motorized Rifle Divisions stretched into 2025, in growing contrast to the Ministry of Defense’s ability to quickly generate several new units in 2023.
In the Central Military District, the General Staff recreated the 27th Motorized Rifle Division, which had been downsized into the 21st Motorized Rifle Brigade in 2009. The district also generated five additional reserve infantry regiments, each with a new designator as “assault” regiments. The Central Grouping of Troops committed these new forces to its offensives in central Donetsk Oblast, Moscow’s priority axis of advance in 2024.
Finally, in 2024 the Russian General Staff canvassed other service branches of the military — the Russian Navy, Aerospace Forces, Strategic Rocket Forces, and the 12th Main Directorate (responsible for nuclear weapons storage and security) — for manpower to generate additional units for the front line. Over the course of the year, the military formed about a dozen motorized rifle regiments. Personnel were drawn from a wide range of non-infantry military specialties to form these new regiments, each of which numbered about 2,500 personnel. The military named these regiments “territorial control” units, suggesting a primary role of securing rear areas or newly captured territory, which would free up “regular” combat units for offensive operations. However, such roles did not keep these regiments out of heavy combat, and Russian commanders have used some units to support offensive tasks.
By reducing the readiness of these important service branches, the General Staff showed its increasingly urgent desire to break Ukrainian defenses in light of growing casualties and slowing force growth. Still, officially the Russian military kept expanding. In September 2024, Putin approved another increase to the armed forces’ authorized strength, bringing it up to the previously stated goal of 1.5 million authorized personnel. This move was both politically symbolic and bureaucratic — the continued force expansion required new billets even if the military used a growing percentage of recruits as personnel replacements, rather than filling the new authorized positions.
However, Russian force expansion in 2024 did not translate into the ability to employ combat power more successfully on a larger scale. On the contrary, by late 2024, the growth of the Russian Armed Forces began to offer diminishing returns. In 2024 the Russian military had largely switched to dismounted infantry assaults of increasingly small unit sizes, often featuring 6–8 men. Airborne units would attack in 15-man formations, breaking down into three-man fire teams. Assault detachments conducted operations in increasingly smaller unit sizes. Russian forces still attempted larger mechanized attacks, especially in the fall, but these were typically unsuccessful as the battlefield became characterized by minefields, prepared defenses, and an ever-growing number of strike drones. Traditional assaults could not attain breakthroughs. Armored fighting vehicles served primarily as battle taxis, bringing dismounts to their assault positions, often at the cost of damage on their way to or from the attack. This resulted from the fact that Russian forces could not come up with a solution to the compound challenges facing them, and that they consistently pushed newly formed or replenished forces into offensive operations without taking the time to restore their capacity to execute.
Russia’s approach in 2024 was to try and stretch Ukrainian forces across a broad front, seeking to grind their way through it with superior numbers. This enabled Russian forces to sustain offensive operations for much of the year — from March to December — essentially one inexhaustible creeping offensive in place of discrete operations. But over time, the presence of pervasive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and drone-based firepower forced them to disperse and spend much of the time attacking with small infantry groups of infantry. Russian forces could not easily concentrate to mount an assault without detection, attacking units were vulnerable to engagement before reaching the forward line of their own troops, and dismounted troops found themselves hunted by drones and artillery thereafter.
In 2025, the Russian General Staff focused force generation on forming new unmanned systems units across the force, including new regiments at the district echelon and dozens of battalions and companies at army-echelon and below. This was in part successful, although the expansion of larger drone units often attracted pilots from within the force, robbing maneuver formations of their drone pilot expertise. The Ministry of Defense’s effort to expand Rubicon as the leading elite drone formation did pay dividends on the battlefield. However, the formation of new maneuver units was limited primarily to bringing the “holdover” Leningrad Military District divisions from 2024 up to strength. The Ministry of Defense announced the formation of two new naval infantry divisions on the basis of existing brigades, but by year’s end had formed only the division headquarters and several of their subunits (largely using the assets of the former brigades). The military has yet to create any additional maneuver components of these divisions.
Moreover, the Ministry of Defense postponed, probably indefinitely, several planned divisions, including new formations that would be permanently based in occupied Ukraine. In September and again in December, Putin said that the size of the force in and around Ukraine was about 700,000 personnel — the same level as in mid-2024 — essentially acknowledging nearly 18 months of negligible ground force growth. Moscow’s goal is to recruit 409,000 contract personnel in 2026, but it is not on track to meet that target. By early 2026, Russia faced several months of losses in excess of recruitment, and some formations began to run short of assault-capable infantry. The result was that some Russian advances stalled and Moscow lost ground in areas like Kupyansk and Zaporizhzhia, from Ukrainian counterattacks.
Despite significant force growth since 2022, the Russian General Staff generally avoids using new formations as operational or strategic reserves, preferring instead to deploy them immediately to offensives on different axes of advance. This is consistent with Moscow’s strategy to maintain and increase pressure along the entire front — rather than prosecute discrete offensives — but a departure from classic Russian operational art. The General Staff has consistently used its airborne troops and naval infantry formations as the de facto assault and quick reaction force, but their use entails regularly pulling these units off the front, rapidly reconstituting them, and then redeploying them to another priority axis, rather than holding them back.
As Ukraine invested into drones as the central mechanism by which they would deny mobility to the Russian military and offset their own thinning manpower across a vast front line, the Russian military continued to look for ways to overcome the drone-imposed defeat zone. In 2025, Russian forces increasingly switched to infiltration tactics and light motorized assaults, splitting infantry platoons into one to two men to move past Ukrainian positions and into the rear as Ukrainian drone crews hunted them relentlessly. Russian combat power trickled onto the battlefield in even smaller amounts, unable to concentrate, or to exploit breaches in Ukrainian lines. The battlespace became a drone-saturated grey zone without cohesive lines, and a low density of forces such that provided presence but not control. Russian adaptations led to modestly greater territorial gains compared to 2024, but at a higher cost and generally not along the axes they prioritized.
Continued......
Similarly, the commanders of the different Russian troop groupings in Ukraine had much more mass to conduct a broad offensive. By the end of 2023, Russia fielded more than 800 maneuver battalions in and around Ukraine, roughly four times the size of the initial invasion force. Of course, constant combat losses meant that few infantry units were actually at authorized strength until they were newly formed or replenished. Many of the newly formed units did not have their standardized table of equipment either. Even so, the sheer growth in a single year was massive. In December, Putin stated that Russian forces in the “zone of the Special Military Operation” numbered 617,000 personnel — roughly three times the size of the invasion force — highlighting the twin successes of mobilization and contract soldier recruitment. Putin also authorized an increase in the armed forces’ authorized strength to 1.32 million troops, reflecting the trajectory toward the 1.5 million goal. This overall force growth gave Moscow the confidence to resume large-scale offensive operations by October 2023, after the failure of Ukraine’s summer offensive.
2024: Force Growth Versus Attrition
In 2024, the Russian military announced that it would form several new divisions and brigades and a new army corps, and that it would recruit another 400,000–450,000 contract soldiers. It largely met those goals with around 430,000-440,000 recruited in 2024. Much of the force growth would be associated with the Leningrad Military District, re-established opposite Finland and the Baltic states. The General Staff intended to form the 44th Army Corps and its subordinate 72nd Motorized Rifle Division and 128th Motorized Rifle Brigade, and expand three brigades into new motorized rifle divisions. The Ministry of Defense also began forming new artillery, air defense, engineer, communications, and logistics units that would be directly subordinate to the military district headquarters. The creation of these units, as well as a separate district, will prove a planning concern for NATO after the war. It will yield a permanent force structure expansion along the borders of NATO members, along with associated supporting fires and strike capabilities.In addition to the burden of creating new units, the new district headquarters also became the basis for a new Northern Grouping of troops that assumed responsibility for Ukraine’s northern border and began offensive operations into Kharkiv Oblast that May. Moscow’s stated goal was to create a buffer zone, but the more practical military objective was to stretch out Ukrainian forces on a longer front. The Northern Grouping, a mix of brand-new units and some deployed from other groupings, struggled to juggle its casualty-intensive operational assignments with surging manpower requirements to fill out the district’s force structure. The formation of the new 68th, 69th, and 71st Motorized Rifle Divisions stretched into 2025, in growing contrast to the Ministry of Defense’s ability to quickly generate several new units in 2023.
In the Central Military District, the General Staff recreated the 27th Motorized Rifle Division, which had been downsized into the 21st Motorized Rifle Brigade in 2009. The district also generated five additional reserve infantry regiments, each with a new designator as “assault” regiments. The Central Grouping of Troops committed these new forces to its offensives in central Donetsk Oblast, Moscow’s priority axis of advance in 2024.
Finally, in 2024 the Russian General Staff canvassed other service branches of the military — the Russian Navy, Aerospace Forces, Strategic Rocket Forces, and the 12th Main Directorate (responsible for nuclear weapons storage and security) — for manpower to generate additional units for the front line. Over the course of the year, the military formed about a dozen motorized rifle regiments. Personnel were drawn from a wide range of non-infantry military specialties to form these new regiments, each of which numbered about 2,500 personnel. The military named these regiments “territorial control” units, suggesting a primary role of securing rear areas or newly captured territory, which would free up “regular” combat units for offensive operations. However, such roles did not keep these regiments out of heavy combat, and Russian commanders have used some units to support offensive tasks.
By reducing the readiness of these important service branches, the General Staff showed its increasingly urgent desire to break Ukrainian defenses in light of growing casualties and slowing force growth. Still, officially the Russian military kept expanding. In September 2024, Putin approved another increase to the armed forces’ authorized strength, bringing it up to the previously stated goal of 1.5 million authorized personnel. This move was both politically symbolic and bureaucratic — the continued force expansion required new billets even if the military used a growing percentage of recruits as personnel replacements, rather than filling the new authorized positions.
However, Russian force expansion in 2024 did not translate into the ability to employ combat power more successfully on a larger scale. On the contrary, by late 2024, the growth of the Russian Armed Forces began to offer diminishing returns. In 2024 the Russian military had largely switched to dismounted infantry assaults of increasingly small unit sizes, often featuring 6–8 men. Airborne units would attack in 15-man formations, breaking down into three-man fire teams. Assault detachments conducted operations in increasingly smaller unit sizes. Russian forces still attempted larger mechanized attacks, especially in the fall, but these were typically unsuccessful as the battlefield became characterized by minefields, prepared defenses, and an ever-growing number of strike drones. Traditional assaults could not attain breakthroughs. Armored fighting vehicles served primarily as battle taxis, bringing dismounts to their assault positions, often at the cost of damage on their way to or from the attack. This resulted from the fact that Russian forces could not come up with a solution to the compound challenges facing them, and that they consistently pushed newly formed or replenished forces into offensive operations without taking the time to restore their capacity to execute.
Russia’s approach in 2024 was to try and stretch Ukrainian forces across a broad front, seeking to grind their way through it with superior numbers. This enabled Russian forces to sustain offensive operations for much of the year — from March to December — essentially one inexhaustible creeping offensive in place of discrete operations. But over time, the presence of pervasive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and drone-based firepower forced them to disperse and spend much of the time attacking with small infantry groups of infantry. Russian forces could not easily concentrate to mount an assault without detection, attacking units were vulnerable to engagement before reaching the forward line of their own troops, and dismounted troops found themselves hunted by drones and artillery thereafter.
2025 to 2026: Expansion Nearly Grinds to a Halt
By 2025, Russian force growth had largely halted, as the number of those killed and seriously wounded mostly offset monthly military recruitment. Moscow sought to recruit 403,000 contract personnel in 2025, and even slightly exceeded this goal, but despite recruiting an average of 35,000 troops per month, was losing a similar number of killed and seriously wounded. This was due in part to Russian forces largely abandoning their use of mechanized equipment by 2025, focusing instead on infiltration tactics and light motorized attacks, and thus trading equipment losses for higher infantry. Ukraine’s approach, expanding drone units to control the terrain with minimal infantry while maximizing attrition to Russian manpower, was working. Employing infiltration tactics has made advances glacially slow and unable to generate momentum, leaving forward positions vulnerable to counterattack and making breakthroughs impossible.In 2025, the Russian General Staff focused force generation on forming new unmanned systems units across the force, including new regiments at the district echelon and dozens of battalions and companies at army-echelon and below. This was in part successful, although the expansion of larger drone units often attracted pilots from within the force, robbing maneuver formations of their drone pilot expertise. The Ministry of Defense’s effort to expand Rubicon as the leading elite drone formation did pay dividends on the battlefield. However, the formation of new maneuver units was limited primarily to bringing the “holdover” Leningrad Military District divisions from 2024 up to strength. The Ministry of Defense announced the formation of two new naval infantry divisions on the basis of existing brigades, but by year’s end had formed only the division headquarters and several of their subunits (largely using the assets of the former brigades). The military has yet to create any additional maneuver components of these divisions.
Moreover, the Ministry of Defense postponed, probably indefinitely, several planned divisions, including new formations that would be permanently based in occupied Ukraine. In September and again in December, Putin said that the size of the force in and around Ukraine was about 700,000 personnel — the same level as in mid-2024 — essentially acknowledging nearly 18 months of negligible ground force growth. Moscow’s goal is to recruit 409,000 contract personnel in 2026, but it is not on track to meet that target. By early 2026, Russia faced several months of losses in excess of recruitment, and some formations began to run short of assault-capable infantry. The result was that some Russian advances stalled and Moscow lost ground in areas like Kupyansk and Zaporizhzhia, from Ukrainian counterattacks.
Despite significant force growth since 2022, the Russian General Staff generally avoids using new formations as operational or strategic reserves, preferring instead to deploy them immediately to offensives on different axes of advance. This is consistent with Moscow’s strategy to maintain and increase pressure along the entire front — rather than prosecute discrete offensives — but a departure from classic Russian operational art. The General Staff has consistently used its airborne troops and naval infantry formations as the de facto assault and quick reaction force, but their use entails regularly pulling these units off the front, rapidly reconstituting them, and then redeploying them to another priority axis, rather than holding them back.
As Ukraine invested into drones as the central mechanism by which they would deny mobility to the Russian military and offset their own thinning manpower across a vast front line, the Russian military continued to look for ways to overcome the drone-imposed defeat zone. In 2025, Russian forces increasingly switched to infiltration tactics and light motorized assaults, splitting infantry platoons into one to two men to move past Ukrainian positions and into the rear as Ukrainian drone crews hunted them relentlessly. Russian combat power trickled onto the battlefield in even smaller amounts, unable to concentrate, or to exploit breaches in Ukrainian lines. The battlespace became a drone-saturated grey zone without cohesive lines, and a low density of forces such that provided presence but not control. Russian adaptations led to modestly greater territorial gains compared to 2024, but at a higher cost and generally not along the axes they prioritized.
What Does This Mean for the Future?
The rapid expansion of the Russian military during the war in Ukraine lends itself to competing interpretations. On the one hand, based on our calculations, Moscow achieved nearly 200 percent growth in the total number of tank battalions and about 400 percent growth in the number of infantry battalions assigned to the war, much of which Moscow accomplished in the first two years. This kind of force expansion and the ability to sustain it despite three years of intense, casualty-intensive offensive operations on a long front line is an organizational and logistical feat. It raises questions about earlier assessments regarding poor Russian logistics. If anything, Russia demonstrated a strong ability to generate forces and to sustain combat operations, including a high artillery and drone-fire rate throughout the war. The Russian problem was not logistical, so much as an inability to concentrate forces at the decisive point, i.e., an inability to translate mass on the battlefield into breakthroughs.Continued......
Continued......
Moreover, Moscow achieved this growth without relying on the historical twin pillars of Russian force generation: conscription and reserve mobilization. Although mobilization never formally ended, it was not the main driver of Russian force expansion. The partial mobilization in autumn 2022 was vital to preventing defeat, but the 300,000 reservists called up pale in comparison to the roughly 1.3 million contract soldiers Moscow has since recruited. This is the first large-scale, extended war that Russia has fought using primarily contracted volunteers. Moscow contracted far more personnel in this war than previously in its history.
Whether this approach will prove to be a historical anomaly or portend Russia’s approach to future wars remains to be seen, but it is notable that Russian leadership was able to sustain the conflict without relying on the sort of mass mobilization seen in prior wars of this scale. In the past, Russian leaders were reticent to reach for mobilization and conscription to sustain their wars of choice, which also limited the scope and the forces deployed. This most recent war shows they may not face such constraints, and prior assumptions that Moscow cannot sustain a prolonged conventional war without mass mobilization could be wrong. Similarly, the view that Russians will not sign up in large numbers for an offensive war is demonstrably incorrect. Despite high losses, the Russian military demonstrated its ability to regenerate forces on the battlefield and to stay on the offensive for several years without resorting to mobilization.
What should NATO make of the Russian military experience and the changes to the Russian force? NATO plans have focused heavily on defending the Baltic states and Poland from a large-scale Russian ground invasion. The Alliance has already applied lessons from Ukraine by constructing extensive defenses and increasing force presence, and is looking at adopting drones to counter Russian numerical advantages. But it remains unclear which lessons the Russian military will inculcate from Ukraine — the General Staff may in the future rely more heavily on its burgeoning drone and deep-strike capabilities to inflict attrition on Allied forces. While NATO militaries are working on procuring counter-unmanned aerial systems capabilities and adapting traditional air defenses, their forces remain small and constrained in terms of the attrition they can withstand. Russia’s inventories of strike drones and long-range missiles are likely to be many times larger than before the war. Nor can the alliance afford to dismiss Russian mass entirely, either. Even with its successful drone employment, Kyiv has still had to field a very large mobilized infantry force, with heavy use of land mines and artillery, to sustain its defenses. NATO militaries are not pursuing the larger force sizes that would enable them to hold the line, or the mass adoption of drones and drone formations within their force structure that would allow them to achieve effects similar to those of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Arguably, they may not have to consider their traditional advantages in airpower and precision strike, but it would be careless to assume that nothing needs to change to address the changing Russian threat.
Ukraine continued to adapt as the Russian military grew, countering Russian advantages over the course of a prolonged conventional war. This was in large part because Ukraine was able to withstand the initial shock of the invasion, and had a large enough force to absorb significant losses as it adapted over time. As appealing as it may be, taking lessons from the latter stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War and applying them to the opening days of a Russia-NATO conflict must be done with care, because it could lead to the wrong conclusions. Moreover, the Russian military is likely to remain much larger after this war, with far more forces deployed near NATO members’ borders. This means that NATO planners will need to come up with technological and tactical solutions to the challenge posed both by Russia’s innovations in Ukraine and its more traditional mass. Failure to do so could lead to unnecessary losses on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s battlefield dynamics deny Russian forces many of the traditional advantages of numbers: Russian commanders cannot mass forces with sufficient speed or surprise to create localized overmatch, and the ubiquitous drone threat in combination with traditional prepared defenses compels Russian forces to attack at below platoon and even squad-strength in most cases. Russian leadership has pursued two and a half years of a broad grinding offensive, assuming that eventually the Ukrainian military would break, and they would achieve their operational goals. Instead, this effort yielded higher costs and diminishing returns as Ukraine consistently adapted over time and optimized to defeat the Russian approach.
Arguably, the steady pipeline of replaceable manpower made senior Russian commanders complacent, reinforcing a cost-ineffective approach. Many Russian combined-arms armies, which doctrinally would have an area of responsibility measured in hundreds of square miles, cover a 20- to 30-mile section of the front in Ukraine. This concentration stretches down to the lowest echelon — brigades of several thousand troops are now often responsible for advancing along a ravine or ridgeline or for seizing one or two small villages. Yet Russian combat power is so disaggregated by drone, mine, and artillery threats that only a tiny fraction of that brigade’s combat strength is usable at any given point in time. Furthermore, Russian force quality continued to degenerate from 2022. Its inability to progress on the battlefield is therefore a combination of being unable to overcome Ukrainian defense, and its own underinvestment in restoring the ability of the force to conduct more complex offensive operations. The Russian approach had a clear tradeoff, by focusing on sustaining a constant pace of offensive operations via replaceable low-quality assault units, the Russian military focused on mass at the expense of restoring force quality, which made it more vulnerable to Ukrainian counter-adaptation.
At this stage of the war, it is not clear if more forces would fix anything for Russia, unless its military changes the method of employment. Absent this additional mass, Moscow’s choices for breaking the battlefield stalemate are now limited. Furthermore, the cracks in Russia’s current force generation model started to show in late 2025. Russian regions must keep increasing bonuses to meet recruitment targets, which is becoming fiscally untenable. If casualty rates continue to increase, the Russian force in Ukraine will probably begin to contract, meaning that Moscow has moved past its high-water mark for offensive capacity.
How much of this force the Russian military will be able to retain also remains uncertain and subject to budgetary constraints. What is clear is that the Russian military seems to have made a profound miscalculation, assuming that force quantity would eventually offset Western support and Kyiv’s innovations and wear down Ukraine. In reality, how it employed force over time led to declining combat efficiency and effectiveness, closing a window of opportunity that was open in 2024 and 2025.
BECOME A MEMBER
Greg Whisler is a retired senior U.S. intelligence analyst specializing in the Russian armed forces.
Michael Kofman a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment and the host of the Russia Contingency, a members-only War on the Rocks podcast. Prior to joining Carnegie, he served as director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of Mr. Whisler and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
Moreover, Moscow achieved this growth without relying on the historical twin pillars of Russian force generation: conscription and reserve mobilization. Although mobilization never formally ended, it was not the main driver of Russian force expansion. The partial mobilization in autumn 2022 was vital to preventing defeat, but the 300,000 reservists called up pale in comparison to the roughly 1.3 million contract soldiers Moscow has since recruited. This is the first large-scale, extended war that Russia has fought using primarily contracted volunteers. Moscow contracted far more personnel in this war than previously in its history.
Whether this approach will prove to be a historical anomaly or portend Russia’s approach to future wars remains to be seen, but it is notable that Russian leadership was able to sustain the conflict without relying on the sort of mass mobilization seen in prior wars of this scale. In the past, Russian leaders were reticent to reach for mobilization and conscription to sustain their wars of choice, which also limited the scope and the forces deployed. This most recent war shows they may not face such constraints, and prior assumptions that Moscow cannot sustain a prolonged conventional war without mass mobilization could be wrong. Similarly, the view that Russians will not sign up in large numbers for an offensive war is demonstrably incorrect. Despite high losses, the Russian military demonstrated its ability to regenerate forces on the battlefield and to stay on the offensive for several years without resorting to mobilization.
What should NATO make of the Russian military experience and the changes to the Russian force? NATO plans have focused heavily on defending the Baltic states and Poland from a large-scale Russian ground invasion. The Alliance has already applied lessons from Ukraine by constructing extensive defenses and increasing force presence, and is looking at adopting drones to counter Russian numerical advantages. But it remains unclear which lessons the Russian military will inculcate from Ukraine — the General Staff may in the future rely more heavily on its burgeoning drone and deep-strike capabilities to inflict attrition on Allied forces. While NATO militaries are working on procuring counter-unmanned aerial systems capabilities and adapting traditional air defenses, their forces remain small and constrained in terms of the attrition they can withstand. Russia’s inventories of strike drones and long-range missiles are likely to be many times larger than before the war. Nor can the alliance afford to dismiss Russian mass entirely, either. Even with its successful drone employment, Kyiv has still had to field a very large mobilized infantry force, with heavy use of land mines and artillery, to sustain its defenses. NATO militaries are not pursuing the larger force sizes that would enable them to hold the line, or the mass adoption of drones and drone formations within their force structure that would allow them to achieve effects similar to those of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Arguably, they may not have to consider their traditional advantages in airpower and precision strike, but it would be careless to assume that nothing needs to change to address the changing Russian threat.
Ukraine continued to adapt as the Russian military grew, countering Russian advantages over the course of a prolonged conventional war. This was in large part because Ukraine was able to withstand the initial shock of the invasion, and had a large enough force to absorb significant losses as it adapted over time. As appealing as it may be, taking lessons from the latter stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War and applying them to the opening days of a Russia-NATO conflict must be done with care, because it could lead to the wrong conclusions. Moreover, the Russian military is likely to remain much larger after this war, with far more forces deployed near NATO members’ borders. This means that NATO planners will need to come up with technological and tactical solutions to the challenge posed both by Russia’s innovations in Ukraine and its more traditional mass. Failure to do so could lead to unnecessary losses on the battlefield.
Conclusion
Russia’s force generation has failed to give Moscow the decisive advantage it expected. Faced with the challenge of overcoming a traditional prepared defense, Ukraine’s adaptation, and Western aid, Russian forces struggled to put the pieces together and attain meaningful breakthroughs or create localized Ukrainian collapse. The growing presence of mass precision on the battlefield further strengthened the defender’s advantage, as Russian force quality and ability to employ forces at scale declined. What the Russian General Staff would have assessed to be an increasingly advantageous correlation of forces over time has never materialized despite chronic Ukrainian manpower shortages. Hence, lofty operational goals consistently went unrealized, as Russian forces could not execute those plans at the tactical level.Ukraine’s battlefield dynamics deny Russian forces many of the traditional advantages of numbers: Russian commanders cannot mass forces with sufficient speed or surprise to create localized overmatch, and the ubiquitous drone threat in combination with traditional prepared defenses compels Russian forces to attack at below platoon and even squad-strength in most cases. Russian leadership has pursued two and a half years of a broad grinding offensive, assuming that eventually the Ukrainian military would break, and they would achieve their operational goals. Instead, this effort yielded higher costs and diminishing returns as Ukraine consistently adapted over time and optimized to defeat the Russian approach.
Arguably, the steady pipeline of replaceable manpower made senior Russian commanders complacent, reinforcing a cost-ineffective approach. Many Russian combined-arms armies, which doctrinally would have an area of responsibility measured in hundreds of square miles, cover a 20- to 30-mile section of the front in Ukraine. This concentration stretches down to the lowest echelon — brigades of several thousand troops are now often responsible for advancing along a ravine or ridgeline or for seizing one or two small villages. Yet Russian combat power is so disaggregated by drone, mine, and artillery threats that only a tiny fraction of that brigade’s combat strength is usable at any given point in time. Furthermore, Russian force quality continued to degenerate from 2022. Its inability to progress on the battlefield is therefore a combination of being unable to overcome Ukrainian defense, and its own underinvestment in restoring the ability of the force to conduct more complex offensive operations. The Russian approach had a clear tradeoff, by focusing on sustaining a constant pace of offensive operations via replaceable low-quality assault units, the Russian military focused on mass at the expense of restoring force quality, which made it more vulnerable to Ukrainian counter-adaptation.
At this stage of the war, it is not clear if more forces would fix anything for Russia, unless its military changes the method of employment. Absent this additional mass, Moscow’s choices for breaking the battlefield stalemate are now limited. Furthermore, the cracks in Russia’s current force generation model started to show in late 2025. Russian regions must keep increasing bonuses to meet recruitment targets, which is becoming fiscally untenable. If casualty rates continue to increase, the Russian force in Ukraine will probably begin to contract, meaning that Moscow has moved past its high-water mark for offensive capacity.
How much of this force the Russian military will be able to retain also remains uncertain and subject to budgetary constraints. What is clear is that the Russian military seems to have made a profound miscalculation, assuming that force quantity would eventually offset Western support and Kyiv’s innovations and wear down Ukraine. In reality, how it employed force over time led to declining combat efficiency and effectiveness, closing a window of opportunity that was open in 2024 and 2025.
BECOME A MEMBER
Greg Whisler is a retired senior U.S. intelligence analyst specializing in the Russian armed forces.
Michael Kofman a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment and the host of the Russia Contingency, a members-only War on the Rocks podcast. Prior to joining Carnegie, he served as director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of Mr. Whisler and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
14:12 minutes
Ukraine is now successfully extending its attacks on Russian shipping to the Black Sea.
2:47 minutes
The life expectancy of a Russian soldier on the front line in Ukraine is less than thirty minutes.
The vast majority are killed by a drone.
Last edited:
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
11:18 minutes
More Russian oil refineries attacked.
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
30:10 minutes
A sad day for Ukraine. Calls for resignation and new elections. This man was responsible for many key reforms.
Last edited:
EasyMoney
Veteran Member
That should tell you all you need to know about the little green goblin.
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
It's a sorry situation and most Ukrainians are not pleased. Especially while fighting off a Russian invasion.
Posted for fair use......
apnews.com
Updated 7:23 AM PDT, July 15, 2026
15 Comments
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Lithuania’s president said Wednesday that intelligence assessments suggest that Russia is planning potential attacks on critical infrastructure in the Baltic states or Poland.
President Gitanas Nausėda said that authorities were monitoring the risk of attacks that could disrupt the country’s energy and transport systems, including facilities supporting Lithuania’s connections with the European electricity grid.
“I cannot deny that we have such information and that it concerns limited kinetic operations likely targeting critical infrastructure,” Nausėda told Lithuania’s BNS news agency.
Nausėda said that the intelligence didn’t identify a specific location or timing for the potential attacks. He said that such provocations could involve conventional or other means.
Russia dismissed the claim as an excuse to justify NATO’s military buildup in the Baltics.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs similarly warned on Wednesday that, with Ukraine increasingly effective at putting pressure on Russia, Moscow might respond with provocations against NATO’s eastern flank.
“Even without a total Ukrainian victory, Russia may indirectly test Article 5 and response mechanisms at the Alliance and European Union levels,” Rinkēvičs said, referring to NATO’s common defense guarantee.
“The next few months, or even the next 12 months, will be crucial for Baltic security,” he said.
The three Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — and Poland, all located on NATO’s eastern flank, have strengthened security around key transport and energy infrastructure in recent months in response to the Russian threat.
The countries say they have long been targets of Russian hybrid attacks, a threat that has intensified since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, 2022.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Poland intercepted Russian aircraft over the Baltic Sea that, according to the Polish government, were conducting surveillance of Poland’s air defense systems, despite remaining outside Polish territorial waters.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the Lithuanian intelligence warning about Russia’s purported plans to launch attacks on infrastructure in the Baltics and elsewhere in Europe.
“It’s a fresh batch of bugaboos intended to continue the brainwashing and prepare the population for further militarization,” Peskov told reporters.
“To do this, they need to create an enemy image on the other side, our side in this case,” he said. “And use it as a pretext to continue moving NATO military infrastructure in all its forms into the Baltic states.”
In late June, leading Polish outlet onet.pl reported that U.S. intelligence had warned its Polish counterparts about the possibility of a Russian attack. Citing its own sources, the outlet said that potential scenarios could include attacks on critical infrastructure, incursions by Russian soldiers near border areas and drone operations.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on July 3 that the warnings should be taken seriously and noted that he had been issuing similar alerts for weeks.
“Poland is preparing very intensively for various scenarios,” Tusk said. “I don’t want to scare anyone, but the coming months, also because of the changing nature of the war in Ukraine, could be critical.”
Tusk said that concerns were particularly pronounced in the Baltic states.
“We are not afraid; we are preparing for various scenarios, but we cannot take this lightly,” he said. “We are conscious of the dangers also because of information coming from our allies.”
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said that Poland had a message for Russian President Vladimir Putin: “We know what you are planning. Don’t do it.”
Vaikšnoras told reporters that Russia’s recent rhetoric targeting the Baltic states and Poland appears to serve a broader purpose, warning that Moscow has long sought to erode public trust in state institutions, the military and the government.
Poland had similarly intensified protection of key infrastructure following a November attack on rail infrastructure blamed on Russia.
On Monday, the European Union said that Russia’s FSB Center 16 had conducted cyberespionage and sabotage against defense industries and critical infrastructure across Europe, including a December attack against a Polish combined heat and power plant supplying heat to almost 500,000 customers.
A recent report from the International Institute of Strategic Studies think tank said that Russia likely used shadow ships to launch drones over Europe that repeatedly disrupted civilian aviation between 2024 and 2026.
The Baltic region is under additional strain from stray Ukrainian drones that have reached Baltic countries as Ukraine ramped up attacks on Baltic Sea ports used for Russian energy exports.
In mid-May, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa resigned over the government’s handling of multiple incidents involving stray drones suspected to be from Ukraine crossing into Latvian territory.
In late May, for the first time in a NATO and European Union capital, Lithuanians were pictured sheltering in underground parking garages in the capital, Vilnius, as authorities warned of unidentified drone activity.
___
Claudia Ciobanu reported from Warsaw, Poland.
Baltics and Poland warn Russia could launch limited military or hybrid provocation against NATO
Lithuania's president says intelligence suggests Russia is planning attacks on critical infrastructure in the Baltic states or Poland.
apnews.com
Baltics and Poland warn Russia could launch limited military or hybrid provocation against NATO
By LIUDAS DAPKUS and CLAUDIA CIOBANUUpdated 7:23 AM PDT, July 15, 2026
15 Comments
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Lithuania’s president said Wednesday that intelligence assessments suggest that Russia is planning potential attacks on critical infrastructure in the Baltic states or Poland.
President Gitanas Nausėda said that authorities were monitoring the risk of attacks that could disrupt the country’s energy and transport systems, including facilities supporting Lithuania’s connections with the European electricity grid.
“I cannot deny that we have such information and that it concerns limited kinetic operations likely targeting critical infrastructure,” Nausėda told Lithuania’s BNS news agency.
Nausėda said that the intelligence didn’t identify a specific location or timing for the potential attacks. He said that such provocations could involve conventional or other means.
Russia dismissed the claim as an excuse to justify NATO’s military buildup in the Baltics.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs similarly warned on Wednesday that, with Ukraine increasingly effective at putting pressure on Russia, Moscow might respond with provocations against NATO’s eastern flank.
“Even without a total Ukrainian victory, Russia may indirectly test Article 5 and response mechanisms at the Alliance and European Union levels,” Rinkēvičs said, referring to NATO’s common defense guarantee.
“The next few months, or even the next 12 months, will be crucial for Baltic security,” he said.
The three Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — and Poland, all located on NATO’s eastern flank, have strengthened security around key transport and energy infrastructure in recent months in response to the Russian threat.
The countries say they have long been targets of Russian hybrid attacks, a threat that has intensified since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, 2022.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Poland intercepted Russian aircraft over the Baltic Sea that, according to the Polish government, were conducting surveillance of Poland’s air defense systems, despite remaining outside Polish territorial waters.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the Lithuanian intelligence warning about Russia’s purported plans to launch attacks on infrastructure in the Baltics and elsewhere in Europe.
“It’s a fresh batch of bugaboos intended to continue the brainwashing and prepare the population for further militarization,” Peskov told reporters.
“To do this, they need to create an enemy image on the other side, our side in this case,” he said. “And use it as a pretext to continue moving NATO military infrastructure in all its forms into the Baltic states.”
Poland sent similar warnings
Nauseda’s comments echo warnings issued in recent weeks by Polish politicians, following multiple media reports that Russia could carry out a limited military or hybrid provocation against Poland in the near future.In late June, leading Polish outlet onet.pl reported that U.S. intelligence had warned its Polish counterparts about the possibility of a Russian attack. Citing its own sources, the outlet said that potential scenarios could include attacks on critical infrastructure, incursions by Russian soldiers near border areas and drone operations.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on July 3 that the warnings should be taken seriously and noted that he had been issuing similar alerts for weeks.
“Poland is preparing very intensively for various scenarios,” Tusk said. “I don’t want to scare anyone, but the coming months, also because of the changing nature of the war in Ukraine, could be critical.”
Tusk said that concerns were particularly pronounced in the Baltic states.
“We are not afraid; we are preparing for various scenarios, but we cannot take this lightly,” he said. “We are conscious of the dangers also because of information coming from our allies.”
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said that Poland had a message for Russian President Vladimir Putin: “We know what you are planning. Don’t do it.”
Countries deploy additional troops to protect infrastructure
Gen. Raimundas Vaikšnoras Lithuania’s chief of defense, recently confirmed that the military had deployed additional forces to help protect strategic infrastructure in response to concerns over possible Russian provocations.Vaikšnoras told reporters that Russia’s recent rhetoric targeting the Baltic states and Poland appears to serve a broader purpose, warning that Moscow has long sought to erode public trust in state institutions, the military and the government.
Poland had similarly intensified protection of key infrastructure following a November attack on rail infrastructure blamed on Russia.
On Monday, the European Union said that Russia’s FSB Center 16 had conducted cyberespionage and sabotage against defense industries and critical infrastructure across Europe, including a December attack against a Polish combined heat and power plant supplying heat to almost 500,000 customers.
A recent report from the International Institute of Strategic Studies think tank said that Russia likely used shadow ships to launch drones over Europe that repeatedly disrupted civilian aviation between 2024 and 2026.
The Baltic region is under additional strain from stray Ukrainian drones that have reached Baltic countries as Ukraine ramped up attacks on Baltic Sea ports used for Russian energy exports.
In mid-May, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa resigned over the government’s handling of multiple incidents involving stray drones suspected to be from Ukraine crossing into Latvian territory.
In late May, for the first time in a NATO and European Union capital, Lithuanians were pictured sheltering in underground parking garages in the capital, Vilnius, as authorities warned of unidentified drone activity.
___
Claudia Ciobanu reported from Warsaw, Poland.
Plain Jane
Just Plain Jane
You weren't kidding!
Ukraine approves Sergiy Koretsky as new PM amid protests over cabinet reshuffle
Ukraine's parliament voted on Thursday to appoint energy executive Sergiy Koretsky as prime minister, the third since the start of Russia's invasion in 2022. The latest cabinet reshuffle sparked…
www.france24.com
Protests against removal of popular defence minister erupt across Ukraine
EuropeRare wartime protests in Ukraine erupted across the country on Thursday with demonstrators demanding that President Volodymyr Zelensky reappoint the popular Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who was removed from office on Wednesday. Lawmakers are set to vote on a new government today.
Issued on: 16/07/2026 - 09:34Modified: 16/07/2026 - 11:14
2 minReading time
Share
By:
FRANCE 24
Video by:
Emmanuelle CHAZE
Large protests erupted in several Ukrainian cities on Thursday morning against the removal of popular Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
AFP reporters in Kyiv saw more than a thousand people gathered on a central square, singing the Ukrainian national anthem, waving Ukrainian and EU flags and chanting "shame" and "bring Fedorov back".
View: https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/2077641130196230210?
Only appointed six months ago, Fedorov carved a reputation as a moderniser who tried to reform the Ukrainian military, worn down by more than four years of the Russian invasion.
His removal risks throwing uncertainty into the army at a time when Ukraine in one of its best positions in the war for months, having halted the pace of the Russian advance and pounding Russian oil and military sites with long-range drones.
"I believe that his dismissal is a slap in the face of the Ukrainian people," Vlada Roman, a 30-year-old business owner told AFP.
She said she hoped President Volodymyr Zelensky would row back on the decision, saying he was "afraid of effective people".
"After today's rally he'll change his mind, I hope so."
Local media reported protests in several other cities, including Lviv, Odesa and Dnipro.
Uncertain future for Fedorov
Fedorov announced late Wednesday he was stepping down, saying it was a "great honour to serve the Ukrainian people", amid a sweeping government reshuffle ordered by Zelensky.No official reason was given for the decision, which protestors saw as part of infighting inside Ukraine's military establishment between Fedorov and commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky.
"In difficult moments, Zelensky behaves like a hero," wrote Vitalii Sych, chief editor of Ukrainian outlet NV. "But we should not forget that difficult moments are often caused by his idiotic decisions."
A proposed new government under energy executive Sergii Koretskyi would see current Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko replace Fedorov, lawmakers said, a move that has rattled faith in Zelensky's leadership.
The deputy commander of Ukraine's air force Pavlo Yelizarov also resigned in protest at Fedorov's removal, calling it "a great evil" for Ukraine's defence.
"It is a great honour for me to work with Mykhailo Fedorov. In 2022, I joined the defence forces to win, not to pretend to be doing something," he said in his resignation statement.
It was not immediately clear whether Fedorov would be offered another government job.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, Reuters)
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Shorts; about two minutes each.
Protests against dismissal.
Last edited:
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
30:31 minutes
Update on popular reaction to dropping defense minister.
ETA: at the very end of the video it shows that the Russians have repaired two crossings in Crimea and Syrski doesn't care.
Last edited:
Mzkitty
I give up.
I'm so tired of this. It never ends. Take a look at this one:
View: https://twitter.com/SajjadTarakzai/status/2078434652784934938/video/1
View: https://twitter.com/SajjadTarakzai/status/2078434652784934938/video/1
Mzkitty
I give up.
The Russia-Ukraine war has now gone on longer than World War 1. Or so I read.
Plain Jane
Just Plain Jane
Germany To Join French Nuclear Exercise, Deepening 'Counter-Russia' Deterrence<!-- --> | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Germany To Join French Nuclear Exercise, Deepening 'Counter-Russia' Deterrence
by Tyler DurdenSunday, Jul 19, 2026 - 07:35 AM
In the latest development related to what some analysts have called the 'new Cold War' and nuclear saber-rattling between Russia and the West, Germany and France are planning a major nuclear exercise later this year.
The atomic drills were announced Friday, after a joint top-level meeting of the French and German governments near Cologne. "Alongside this work on a shared doctrine, German conventional forces will this year take part in a nuclear exercise of the French military," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz unveiled.
picture alliance/dpaHe detailed while at a press event alongside French President Emmanuel Macron that a "strategic steering group" established by the leading European allies would continue looking at deterrence in the future, with an eye on Russia.
"This is complementary to our nuclear participation and deterrence within NATO, which we still hold to," he added. He also previewed "a maneuver in the autumn held on the initiative of France" - while speaking of the Ukraine war.
"We will clarify together what form exactly this participation will take," he said.
France is newly positioning itself at the forefront of nuclear deterrence for Europe, a role that the United States has long assumed, and currently still does.
According to some of Macron's statements at the same event: "Patriotism, yes; nationalism, never. At a time when Europe is rearming, to think that each of us separately accumulating capabilities is the way history is going is absurd." More details have been offered in the following:
Currently the United States and the UK, which both maintain nuclear arsenals, form the core of NATO's nuclear deterrence strategy. While France also possesses nuclear weapons, it does not yet participate on a leadership level in NATO's nuclear planning group. The US military also contributes F-35, refueling aircraft, and other support planes.
Russia has not infrequently held its own strategic drills over the course of the last several years of war in Ukraine. It has also become the 'new normal' for Russia and Europe to hold rival conventional war games, amid threats, warnings and ongoing miliary flexing.
I don't know if you saw it, but recently France has offered to extend its "nuclear umbrella" over other European countries. I posted at the time that I didn't know why (considering Europe's history) other European countries, and especially Germany, would trust the French, but there you are. Apparently Europeans can't go more than a couple of generation without fighting each other, with or without provocation, and I don't think they actually even need Russia as an excuse to start something.
Posted for fair use.....
By Daria Tarasova-Markina, Victoria Butenko and Tim Lister CNN
Updated 7 hr ago
Kyiv —
Russia has launched one of its largest ballistic missile attacks against Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion more than four years ago.
Ukraine’s air force said Moscow had launched “a massive combined strike against Ukraine using attack UAVs and various types of air- and ground-launched missiles” overnight into Sunday, and that the main target was the capital Kyiv.
“The enemy launched more than 40 missiles of various types – most of them against the capital – and 120 attack drones,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
CNN journalists in the city reported that the barrage was intense, concentrated in a two-hour spell overnight. On Sunday morning there was a strong smell of smoke in the city, one said, and an air raid alert was still in place.
Andriy Sybiha, acting minister of foreign affairs, said Russia had launched “around four dozen” missiles traveling on a ballistic trajectory, describing it as the “largest number of ballistic missiles since the start of the war.”
Air defenses had “shot down or neutralized 126 targets, including 18 missiles and 108 unmanned aerial vehicles,” the air force said. But 23 missiles and 10 drones had hit 20 locations, it added.
Images from Kyiv showed a huge crater gouged out of the ground, and the scorched facades of buildings. A large logistics warehouse was severely damaged.
Strikes were reported in five districts of the capital, according to the state emergency services. One person had been killed and 16 wounded in the city, they said.
Across Ukraine, local authorities have reported at least 16 civilians killed and 77 injured in the past 24 hours by Russian drone and missile attacks, with most of the casualties in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed what it called a “massive strike” against what it called “defense industry facilities and logistics centers in the city of Kyiv,” and said later on its Telegram channel: “We’re loaded and carrying on.”
The Russian strikes follow devastating Ukrainian drone attacks on two logistics centers early Saturday in which eight people were killed.
“Protection against ballistic missiles is our constant and top priority right now,” Zelensky said. “Interceptors are needed every day, and I am grateful to everyone who takes our agreements seriously and ensures the delivery of anti-ballistic capabilities.”
Ukraine has frequently pleaded for more interceptors capable of dealing with ballistic missiles, whose trajectory and speed make them difficult to take out. They can re-enter the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound.
Russia is increasing the frequency of combined missile and drone strikes to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure, analysts say.
“The bombardment of Ukrainian cities by Russian ballistic missiles is now a preferred strategy and something that we should expect to see more of,” according to Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Ukraine has a dwindling stock of US-made Patriot missiles, which are also heavily in demand among US allies amid the Gulf conflict. While production of the Patriot is being ramped up in the United States, demand exceeds supply.
Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump proposed that Ukraine produce Patriots under license, but such a project would take months and possibly years to come to fruition.
Ukraine is also working with France and Italy on arrangements to produce another air defense missile, the SAMP/T. But some analysts have said its performance has at times fallen short of the Patriot’s.
The market for interceptors capable of destroying ballistic missiles has “a limited number of suppliers, long lead times, and unresolved questions over capability,” according to Fabian Hoffmann at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.
Ukraine has maintained its strikes against Russian energy infrastructure with another attack early Sunday on the export hub that brings oil from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which operates the hub off Russia’s Black Sea coast, said on Sunday that two tankers had been hit and that oil loading has been stopped. It said there were no casualties.
The same site was struck on Friday.
The Ukrainians said Sunday they had used a maritime drone to hit a tanker in the Black Sea that operated as part of Russia’s shadow fleet. It named the tanker as the Avero, which entered the Black Sea on Thursday but is not sanctioned by the US or Europe, according to ship-tracking service MarineTraffic.
Three oil depots in southern Russia were also struck, according to the Ukrainian Security Service.
Russia unleashes one of biggest ballistic missile attacks of the Ukraine war, Kyiv says
By Daria Tarasova-Markina, Victoria Butenko and Tim Lister CNN
Updated 7 hr ago
Kyiv —
Russia has launched one of its largest ballistic missile attacks against Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion more than four years ago.
Ukraine’s air force said Moscow had launched “a massive combined strike against Ukraine using attack UAVs and various types of air- and ground-launched missiles” overnight into Sunday, and that the main target was the capital Kyiv.
“The enemy launched more than 40 missiles of various types – most of them against the capital – and 120 attack drones,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
CNN journalists in the city reported that the barrage was intense, concentrated in a two-hour spell overnight. On Sunday morning there was a strong smell of smoke in the city, one said, and an air raid alert was still in place.
Andriy Sybiha, acting minister of foreign affairs, said Russia had launched “around four dozen” missiles traveling on a ballistic trajectory, describing it as the “largest number of ballistic missiles since the start of the war.”
Air defenses had “shot down or neutralized 126 targets, including 18 missiles and 108 unmanned aerial vehicles,” the air force said. But 23 missiles and 10 drones had hit 20 locations, it added.
Images from Kyiv showed a huge crater gouged out of the ground, and the scorched facades of buildings. A large logistics warehouse was severely damaged.
Strikes were reported in five districts of the capital, according to the state emergency services. One person had been killed and 16 wounded in the city, they said.
Across Ukraine, local authorities have reported at least 16 civilians killed and 77 injured in the past 24 hours by Russian drone and missile attacks, with most of the casualties in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed what it called a “massive strike” against what it called “defense industry facilities and logistics centers in the city of Kyiv,” and said later on its Telegram channel: “We’re loaded and carrying on.”
The Russian strikes follow devastating Ukrainian drone attacks on two logistics centers early Saturday in which eight people were killed.
“Protection against ballistic missiles is our constant and top priority right now,” Zelensky said. “Interceptors are needed every day, and I am grateful to everyone who takes our agreements seriously and ensures the delivery of anti-ballistic capabilities.”
Ukraine has frequently pleaded for more interceptors capable of dealing with ballistic missiles, whose trajectory and speed make them difficult to take out. They can re-enter the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound.
Russia is increasing the frequency of combined missile and drone strikes to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure, analysts say.
“The bombardment of Ukrainian cities by Russian ballistic missiles is now a preferred strategy and something that we should expect to see more of,” according to Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Ukraine has a dwindling stock of US-made Patriot missiles, which are also heavily in demand among US allies amid the Gulf conflict. While production of the Patriot is being ramped up in the United States, demand exceeds supply.
Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump proposed that Ukraine produce Patriots under license, but such a project would take months and possibly years to come to fruition.
Ukraine is also working with France and Italy on arrangements to produce another air defense missile, the SAMP/T. But some analysts have said its performance has at times fallen short of the Patriot’s.
The market for interceptors capable of destroying ballistic missiles has “a limited number of suppliers, long lead times, and unresolved questions over capability,” according to Fabian Hoffmann at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.
Ukraine has maintained its strikes against Russian energy infrastructure with another attack early Sunday on the export hub that brings oil from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which operates the hub off Russia’s Black Sea coast, said on Sunday that two tankers had been hit and that oil loading has been stopped. It said there were no casualties.
The same site was struck on Friday.
The Ukrainians said Sunday they had used a maritime drone to hit a tanker in the Black Sea that operated as part of Russia’s shadow fleet. It named the tanker as the Avero, which entered the Black Sea on Thursday but is not sanctioned by the US or Europe, according to ship-tracking service MarineTraffic.
Three oil depots in southern Russia were also struck, according to the Ukrainian Security Service.
jward
passin' thru
asiatimes.com
JULY 19, 2026 – I have had many requests to discuss the removal of Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. However, I wanted to hold off until this update to see how issues were developing. This is still a fast-moving and chaotic story, and the fallout will only be known in a few days/weeks.
For instance, it seems that the command of General Oleksandr Syrskyi is now hanging by a thread – and one of the reasons Fedorov was removed by President Zelensky was supposedly to protect Syrskyi. There is even talk that Fedorov could be reinstated in some position.
This tweet by Fedorov last night was a really positive sign.
Also, Zelensky hinted last night that – after all the mass protests, which stretched from Ukrainian civil society to parts of the armed forces – that change was coming.
So are we witnessing the worst week for Ukraine in years turning into one of the best?
Well, let’s start with why it was the worst? Well as this is being written, Fedorov is still out. As Defense Minister Fedorov was a key part in the efforts to modernize, re-equip and ultimately reimagine the structure and conduct of the Ukrainian armed forces. Like many who have contacts in Ukraine, I had heard for a while that he and Syrskyi were quarreling, that forces which preferred the old, corrupt ways of doing business were angry at him, and even that Zelensky was growing jealous of Fedorov’s increasing popularity. However, I never thought he would be fired – his successes seemed so manifest that I thought in the end it could not happen. The first time I came across such a report, I tried to wish it away.
However, my wishing, not surprisingly, was irrelevant and, a few days later, he was out. To understand why this is such a terrible move, it is important to understand what made Fedorov so important, why the reasons for his removal are terrible signs for the Zelensky government, and where we might go from here. So, this update will mostly be about this move.
There will be two other stories as well. The first is about the status of the US license (still not actually granted) to allow Ukraine to build Patriots or at least Patriot interceptors. Finally, we have had, once again, contrasting attacks on Moscow and Kyiv (and another example of why waiting for at least a year for Patriots is such a help to Putin). We can expect more of what we have seen the last few days.
However, before that, the main story.
However he understood all of it, and provided energy and direction that had been lacking. And, unlike earlier defense ministers, he was willing to go after corruption – hard. He also brought in the most ambitious attempt to improve the pay and conditions for Ukrainian soldiers that has ever been attempted.
All of this brought him into conflict with older, Soviet-influenced elements in the armed forces, most prominently Syrskyi. The two looked at the war completely differently. Syrskyi wanted more soldiers for tactical operations to fight over every village, and Fedorov looked to the big picture.
And the relationship between Zelensky and Fedorov also became strained. I have never been one of those to overly praise Zelensky because as a war leader he has strengths and real weaknesses. The corruption scandal of last summer showed many of the weaknesses, which you can read about in this piece.
Basically Zelensky liked backing corrupt and inefficient cronies like Yermak and Syrskyi, and at one point threatened a political crisis in doing so. Here is a quote from that piece. The “he” in the first sentence is Zelensky.
Fedorov, thankfully, chose not to go quietly. When his dismissal was made clear, he gave a press conference in which he outlined his vision point by point and described what he was trying to achieve. Here is an English-language translation of the press conference, which really is too long and detailed to quote but provides a great glimpse into why he was so important.
Here is just one example from it – when Fedorov admits he wanted Syrskyi and Syrskyi’s key deputy, out. The boldfacing is mine for emphasis.
The dissension in the armed forces seems to have been extremely worrying for Zelensky. Many of the best and most effective units had members willing to speak up against Syrskyi and for Fedorov – and at the same time, Syrskyi was pressuring them to support him.
This really is a crucial moment. The firing of Fedorov, if it is allowed to stand along with the keeping of Syrskyi, will not mean that Ukraine will lose the war. However it will mean higher casualties, more corruption, less flexibility and more Soviet-style thinking. I can think of nothing worse.
So right now as I am writing we are still facing the worst week of the war as we have Fedorov out and Syrskyi in.
However the mood music seems to be heading to Fedorov back in some position and Syrskyi under threat. If things evolve into Fedorov back and Syrskyi out, it will be the best week for Ukraine in years.
Can Ukraine’s worst week in years become the best?
JULY 19, 2026 – I have had many requests to discuss the removal of Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. However, I wanted to hold off until this update to see how issues were developing. This is still a fast-moving and chaotic story, and the fallout will only be known in a few days/weeks.
For instance, it seems that the command of General Oleksandr Syrskyi is now hanging by a thread – and one of the reasons Fedorov was removed by President Zelensky was supposedly to protect Syrskyi. There is even talk that Fedorov could be reinstated in some position.
This tweet by Fedorov last night was a really positive sign.
Also, Zelensky hinted last night that – after all the mass protests, which stretched from Ukrainian civil society to parts of the armed forces – that change was coming.
So are we witnessing the worst week for Ukraine in years turning into one of the best?
Well, let’s start with why it was the worst? Well as this is being written, Fedorov is still out. As Defense Minister Fedorov was a key part in the efforts to modernize, re-equip and ultimately reimagine the structure and conduct of the Ukrainian armed forces. Like many who have contacts in Ukraine, I had heard for a while that he and Syrskyi were quarreling, that forces which preferred the old, corrupt ways of doing business were angry at him, and even that Zelensky was growing jealous of Fedorov’s increasing popularity. However, I never thought he would be fired – his successes seemed so manifest that I thought in the end it could not happen. The first time I came across such a report, I tried to wish it away.
However, my wishing, not surprisingly, was irrelevant and, a few days later, he was out. To understand why this is such a terrible move, it is important to understand what made Fedorov so important, why the reasons for his removal are terrible signs for the Zelensky government, and where we might go from here. So, this update will mostly be about this move.
There will be two other stories as well. The first is about the status of the US license (still not actually granted) to allow Ukraine to build Patriots or at least Patriot interceptors. Finally, we have had, once again, contrasting attacks on Moscow and Kyiv (and another example of why waiting for at least a year for Patriots is such a help to Putin). We can expect more of what we have seen the last few days.
However, before that, the main story.
The worst week for Ukraine in years: Can it become the best?
I was in Kyiv when, in January of this year, stories about Fedorov’s possible appointment as defense minister started circulating. When the move was announced it ended up as the centrepiece of a weekend update. What I heard from Ukrainians about Fedorov was remarkable. Below is the key part of that update about him. Rarely had I had such a unanimously positive view expressed about any Ukrainian political figure. His ideas also seemed to be the right ones.Since his appointment I would go further. Fedorov revealed himself to be the most effective defense minister on the planet. He seemed to choose all the right priorities for Ukraine and improved performance in them all. Here are some quotes of his from the time he was appointed so you can see just how he had a clear (and I believe absolutely right) vision of how Ukraine needed to press ahead. Here are just some of the areas:
- Drone production: Fedorov not only wanted to increase production, he wanted to protect and enhance supply lines to decrease Ukrainian vulnerabilities.
- Professionalization of the military: Fedorov understood that the last thing Ukraine needed was lots of unmotivated conscripts. He wanted to make military service much more professional and appealing to draw in the right kind of motivated recruits who could fight in this environment.
- Moving against systemic corruption: There are two kinds of arms manufacturer in Ukraine. There is a dynamic, start-up culture with companies that are adaptive and efficient, and there are some older, legacy producers that work on more corrupt practices. Fedorov wanted to support the former.
- Mathematics of war: He just understood this as you can see from this quote. “Thanks to ePoints, we fully understand what is happening with drones. Soon, we will launch a revolutionary project, Mission Control: each crew will enter into the system the UAV type, destination, launch location, and more. This allows us to better understand the situation along the line of battle and the effectiveness of drone use.With Mission Control, we will close the entire drone cycle: procurement, delivery, and then battlefield employment. Through ePoints, we currently see only mission execution reports, while it is important for us to have the full picture, including results and accumulated experience. We worked on Mission Control functionality for two years. The next step is to launch Mission Control for artillery.It is very important that we have begun to calculate everything systematically. Soon, we will have complete information on drone crews: commanders, their monthly ratings, and statistics for the entire corps. We need to see the full picture to simplify and speed up management decision-making.”
However he understood all of it, and provided energy and direction that had been lacking. And, unlike earlier defense ministers, he was willing to go after corruption – hard. He also brought in the most ambitious attempt to improve the pay and conditions for Ukrainian soldiers that has ever been attempted.
All of this brought him into conflict with older, Soviet-influenced elements in the armed forces, most prominently Syrskyi. The two looked at the war completely differently. Syrskyi wanted more soldiers for tactical operations to fight over every village, and Fedorov looked to the big picture.
And the relationship between Zelensky and Fedorov also became strained. I have never been one of those to overly praise Zelensky because as a war leader he has strengths and real weaknesses. The corruption scandal of last summer showed many of the weaknesses, which you can read about in this piece.
Basically Zelensky liked backing corrupt and inefficient cronies like Yermak and Syrskyi, and at one point threatened a political crisis in doing so. Here is a quote from that piece. The “he” in the first sentence is Zelensky.
In firing Fedorov and protecting Syrskyi last week, Zelensky was once again showing his worst side as a war leader. He was protecting loyal incompetence over what was better for the country. There can be no sugar-coating of the pill on this.
Fedorov, thankfully, chose not to go quietly. When his dismissal was made clear, he gave a press conference in which he outlined his vision point by point and described what he was trying to achieve. Here is an English-language translation of the press conference, which really is too long and detailed to quote but provides a great glimpse into why he was so important.
Here is just one example from it – when Fedorov admits he wanted Syrskyi and Syrskyi’s key deputy, out. The boldfacing is mine for emphasis.
The reaction of Ukrainian civil society and elements of the armed services, to Fedorov’s removal showed that his vision had a wide base of support in Ukraine and that this move was not going to be quietly accepted. Ukrainians understood that Fedorov was a key part of the changes that were giving them the initiative in the war. They understood the importance of his outlook and why his fights to improve soldiers’ lives and to cut back corruption were so important. Protests started—and actually grew in Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Lviv and many other Ukrainian cities (large and small).
The dissension in the armed forces seems to have been extremely worrying for Zelensky. Many of the best and most effective units had members willing to speak up against Syrskyi and for Fedorov – and at the same time, Syrskyi was pressuring them to support him.
This really is a crucial moment. The firing of Fedorov, if it is allowed to stand along with the keeping of Syrskyi, will not mean that Ukraine will lose the war. However it will mean higher casualties, more corruption, less flexibility and more Soviet-style thinking. I can think of nothing worse.
So right now as I am writing we are still facing the worst week of the war as we have Fedorov out and Syrskyi in.
However the mood music seems to be heading to Fedorov back in some position and Syrskyi under threat. If things evolve into Fedorov back and Syrskyi out, it will be the best week for Ukraine in years.
jward
passin' thru
An update on Ukraine and Patriot interceptors
I originally thought last weekend that this would be the story of the week. All the talk of Trump’s pivot to Ukraine by giving them a license to build Patriots did seem to die down in the focus on Fedorov’s firing this week. However, this story, as the attacks last night on Kyiv reconfirmed, remains vital. And, as always when it comes to Trump, the reality is far less than that which people understand.Here is what I have been able to understand from talking to people who know. No one is going on the record, but there has been a great consistency in what I am hearing. So I cannot attribute any of this, but I can guarantee that it was what I am hearing and I believe the people I speak to.
- There are indeed discussions now about Ukraine getting a license for some kind of Patriot production (maybe just interceptors). The companies seem willing to do this and therefore moves are being made. It might be announced soon or actually it could take longer (Trump might change his mind).
- There was NO preparation for this. The companies had not been consulted on this by the administration and had made no preparations to help Ukraine in attempts to source their own production. This is crucial as it means Ukraine building actual copies of advanced Patriot interceptors is probably years away (if they get built at all).
- What Ukraine might be able to hope for in a year or two is their own, less capable version of a Patriot interceptor that can fire from the Patriot system. When Zelensky is talking about getting help, this is what he is referring to. Take note of his careful language here from just a few days ago:“We have a political agreement [with US President Donald Trump], and we expect that by the end of 2026 we will have the technical ability for a Ukrainian team to produce American missiles using our own capabilities.” Note that having the technical capability to manufacture something is different from having a productive system up and running.
- So that means at least one more winter and probably two with little in the way of much support from this initiative. Even then, to get actual Patriot-class interceptors will take longer. We can hope that the Ukrainian version of the interceptor is effective, but cannot tell now.
The upshot is that Ukraine might have a less complex (and hopefully not less effective) version of what they had in the winters of 2024-2025 and 2025-2026, but will not have them until the winter of 2027-2028 or maybe 2028-2029. That means, because of Donald Trump, Ukraine is facing a terrible winter this year, as Russia can blast it with ballistic missiles and the Ukrainians will lack the right interceptors.
What seemed to happen was this. Trump was tired of getting flack for not helping Ukraine, was hearing that Ukraine was doing much better than he expected and did not want to be left behind, so took a step to make it seem like he was helping Ukraine but that would not hurt Putin for a long time and would actually help Putin in the near term. Remember that, when some Trump backer tells you that Trump now supports Ukraine. He has actually made sure Ukraine will be easier for Putin to attack this year and the next.
Moscow and Kyiv
The two capital cities had major attacks launched against them in the last two days. Last night, the Russians launched a major attack on Kyiv using exactly the systems that they know Ukraine cannot intercept because of the Patriot shortage. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the Russians sent 25 ballistic missiles, 10 Zirkon hypersonic missiles, and six other missiles (and a number of drones) against Kyiv.This might have been the largest ballistic missile attack on Kyiv so far. Early reports on casualties are thankfully light (one dead and a number wounded), however that could be down to luck as much as anything else. What is clear is that the bombardment of Ukrainian cities by Russian ballistic missiles is now a preferred strategy and something that we should expect to see more of.
The day before, the Ukrainians launched a long-range drone attack on targets around Moscow (and other places). The Moscow targets showed a Ukrainian favorite (an oil facility) but also something new—a Wildberries warehouse. The latter went up in a black cloud of smoke.
Wildberries is the Russian equivalent of Amazon, an all-purpose supply company from which people can order a wide range of goods. Note that the Moscow warehouse was not the only Wildberries one attacked; a large facility near Taganrog was also hit.
The Wildberries attack is notable because it is the kind of target that the Ukrainians could have hit before but chose not to. Certainly from the fires it seems that these facilities were pretty easily attacked, were hit directly and probably not well defended.
As targets of war, these warehouses go into the more debatable category. Did they contain some components that could help war production? Undoubtedly. Do they contain elements that support civilian life? Undoubtedly as well. The interesting thing shown by these attacks is that Ukraine is more and more edging over to a broader interpretation of what is a legitimate target of war.
It might also be a signal to Russia, particularly as Ukraine knows that in the winter of 2026-2027 there will be little it can do to stop Russian ballistic missiles. The message is: “We can strike what you do not want us to strike. Just so far we have held back. We might no longer.”
I think what we can say is that we will see more of what we have seen in the last two days – from both sides.
Phillips P. O’Brien is professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrew. This article is republished with permission from Phillips’s Newsletter, a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support Phillips’s work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Can Ukraine's worst week in years become the best? - Asia Times
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
4:49 minutes
Ukrainian campaign against storage and distribution sites continues with more successful strikes.
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
21:36 minutes
More attacks on Moscow distribution hubs. Russian air defense is centered on defending Moscow, but Ukraine is still able to penetrate it.
DuckandCover
Proud Sheeple
This thread seems to have gone pretty quiet lately. Perhaps this war is over? I know two or three years ago, we read non-stop "Ukies surrounded! Front line collapsing!" messages every day. Is it over?
raven
TB Fanatic
no more ukies to surround. they are all flying drones out of Latvia
somdwatcher
Veteran Member
This war is not over, just the sources becoming quiet for various reasons. This theatre of WW3 is certainly worth every bit of observation, because the Euro's want this war with Russia.
raven
TB Fanatic
The Europeans want the US and Russia out of the way so they can run the new world order.
They all want the US out
somdwatcher
Veteran Member
Exactly, but they want the US bases so we can be rooted in Europe and responsible to the EU/NATO unelected government