President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been talking about Russia’s battlefield death toll and asked the new defense minister to make it a priority.
Ukrainian leaders say more than 35,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously injured in December alone, and the goal is to further increase that number to 50,000 per month.
Mykhailo Federov told reporters at his first press conference as defense minister that the president’s mission was to “make Russia’s war costs unsustainable and thereby force peace.”
The point that Russia is suffering huge losses is not new. A new report last week estimated that 1.2 million Russians have been killed, injured or missing since the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, the highest casualties suffered by a major military power since World War II. The report estimates the number of Ukrainian casualties at between 500,000 and 600,000.
“The data suggest that Russia is barely winning,” the report’s authors wrote.
Probably not, but as senior officials from Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare for their next round of face-to-face talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, Ukraine supporters would be wrong to get carried away.
“Highlighting the huge number of Russian deaths shows that Ukraine’s main strategy is attrition. But if we are to move the dynamics of the war in a better direction, we need more than that,” a former Ukrainian official told CNN.
On the other hand, focusing on the headline-grabbing numbers provides important perspective on Ukraine’s refusal to abandon Donetsk as part of a “peace” deal with Russia.
The logic behind Kiev’s position is simple. Few Ukrainians believe that President Putin has goals other than the complete conquest of their country. So if Russia is trying to take Donetsk by force while Ukraine is expected to kill hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers, why hand over the territory for free?
Ukrainian forces still hold about 20% of the eastern region, including heavily fortified cities such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and the Institute for the Study of War’s latest estimates suggest it could take another 18 months for Russia to capture it all.
If these Russian soldiers were not killed in action – the logic goes – they would remain on occupied Ukrainian territory and be ready to resume the war from a more advantageous position as soon as the Kremlin comes up with an excuse to do so.
Few people in Ukraine believe that President Putin will drop his territorial claims, and most do not believe that U.S. President Donald Trump will apply the necessary pressure to change his mind.
“Even though the government is negotiating in good faith, many believe that the whole process was done to ensure the support of the US government,” said a former Ukrainian official.
“People are very skeptical about the negotiation process.”
But what happens to Ukraine’s battlefield strategy if there is no confidence that the negotiations are going somewhere? Is it best to stack up the other side’s body bags?
Ryan O’Leary, an American ex-combatant who led an international volunteer force called the Chosen Company, doesn’t believe so, sparking a heated debate after making his case in a social media post.
He took issue with the much-vaunted “e-points” system in which Ukrainian military units earn points for each Russian soldier killed or material destroyed. Points are exchanged for new equipment, and the MoD says the scheme provides a wealth of data to help plan for the future.
But O’Leary suggested they created the wrong incentives, resulting in Ukrainian commanders prioritizing more direct drone strikes against infantry targets around the front lines over stronger but more important deep strikes against Russian drone crews operating in Russian logistics and rear positions, such as vehicles and communications hubs.
“Drone warfare today is not about who attacks more soldiers…Operational depth is where wars are decided. If the enemy can move fuel, ammunition, drones, crew, and repair vehicles 10 to 40 kilometers behind the lines without fear, he owns the depth, even if he loses five times as many men in the trenches,” O’Leary wrote in X.
In fact, his accusations reveal two important structural challenges for Ukraine.
First, Russia is catching up, and perhaps ahead, in terms of drone technology, operational tactics, and countermeasures.
Oleksandr Karpyuk, an aviation reconnaissance officer with the 59th Independent Assault Brigade, complained on Facebook that Ukraine had been unable to capitalize on its early advantages in this field, especially by not diversifying the number of radio frequencies used by drones to transmit signals.
As a result, once Russia improved its electronic warfare (EW) technology, it could disrupt Ukraine’s ability to fly drones behind Russian lines by jamming just two frequencies.
In addition, Karpyuk wrote that Russia’s tactical air defense personnel have improved significantly, and that Moscow continues to benefit from leading the development of fiber-optic drones, which do not transmit signals and are therefore not subject to Ukraine’s own electronic warfare countermeasures.
There is also the personnel issue in Ukraine.
The infantry shortage is well known. Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Institute estimates there are fewer than 10 Ukrainian infantrymen per kilometer of front. He also estimates that most brigades have no more than 10 percent of their total infantry personnel. Historically, that number has been more than 30%.
Li told KI Insights, a strategic intelligence unit backed by the Kiev Independence Army, that these low numbers were enough to prevent a major breakthrough by Russian troops, who had only succeeded in making small, gradual advances.
But in a war where drones, not infantry, matter most, especially in the critical battle for operational depth – destroying targets up to 25 miles (40 kilometers) behind the lines – the most pressing problem is Ukraine’s lack of drone crews.
Robert Brobdy, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Forces, last week openly defended his command’s warplanes, saying the number of drone operators needs to be tripled. He wrote on his Facebook page that only 30% of the 745-mile front line is currently covered.
Federov, the new defense minister, acknowledged the scale of the problem, telling Ukraine’s parliament that around 2 million people had ignored their muster papers and another 200,000 had deserted.
Much now rests on Zelenskiy’s ability to address talent issues and restore Ukraine’s technological edge, while ensuring that his goals are met.
“Unless we stay ahead of the Russian military in technology and tactics, we cannot say we have a good chance of winning,” the former Ukrainian official warned.
CNN’s Victoria Butenko and Daria Tarasova Markina in Kyiv contributed to this report.
