Volodymyr Zelensky has been talking about casualties on Russia’s battlefields and asked his new defense minister to make them a priority.
Ukrainian leaders say more than 35,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously injured in December alone and the goal should be to get that number even higher – to 50,000 per month.
Mikhailo Fedorov told reporters at his first press conference as defense minister to “make peace through strength so that Russia cannot bear the costs of war” – a task set for him by the president.
The suggestion that Russia has suffered heavy losses is not new. A new report last week estimated that 1.2 million Russians have been killed, wounded or missing since the all-out invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, the highest casualty toll for a major military power since World War II. Reports put Ukrainian casualties at between 500,000 and 600,000.
“The data suggest it will be difficult for Russia to win,” the report’s authors wrote.
Perhaps not, but as top officials from Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare for the next round of direct talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, Ukraine’s supporters would be making a mistake if they got carried away.
“The emphasis on large numbers of Russian deaths shows that Ukraine’s main strategy is attrition. But if we want to move the dynamics of the war in a better direction, we need more than that,” a former Ukrainian official told CNN.
On the one hand, focusing on the eye-catching numbers provides important perspective on Ukraine’s refusal to abandon Donetsk as part of a “peace” deal with Russia.
The logic behind Kiev’s stance is simple: few Ukrainians believe Putin has any goals other than the outright conquest of their country. So, if Ukraine can kill hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers, and Moscow has been trying to take Donetsk by force, why should it hand over territory in vain?
Ukrainian soldiers still control about 20% of the territory in the east, which includes heavily fortified cities such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and the latest estimates from the Institute of War Research indicate that it may take Russia another 18 months to capture all the territory.
If these Russian soldiers are not killed in combat – the logic continues – they will remain in occupied Ukrainian territory, ready to restart the war from a better position, should the Kremlin find an excuse to do so.
Few in Ukraine believe Putin will give up his territorial claims, and most no longer believe U.S. President Donald Trump will exert the necessary pressure to change his mind.
“While the administration negotiated in good faith, many viewed the entire process as an attempt to secure U.S. government support,” the former Ukrainian official said.
“People are very skeptical about the negotiation process.”
But if there is no confidence that negotiations will make progress, what about Ukraine’s battlefield strategy? Is stacking each other’s body bags the best solution?
Ryan O’Leary, an American former soldier who leads an international volunteer group called Chosen Company, doesn’t think so and sparked a heated debate after he made his case in a social media post.
He took issue with the much-vaunted “e-points” program, under which Ukrainian forces earn points for every Russian soldier killed or piece of material destroyed. The points can be redeemed for new equipment, and the Department of Defense says the program provides a wealth of data that will help inform future plans.
But O’Leary said they had the wrong incentives in place, leading Ukrainian commanders to prioritize more direct drone strikes against infantry targets around the battle lines rather than harsher but more important deep strikes against Russian logistics facilities such as vehicles and communications centers and Russian drone crews in rear positions.
O’Leary wrote on the
In fact, his accusations expose two key structural challenges facing Ukraine.
First, in terms of drone technology, combat tactics and countermeasures, Russia has caught up and is likely to be in the lead.
Oleksandr Karpyuk, an aerial reconnaissance officer with the 59th Independent Commando Brigade, wrote on Facebook that Ukraine failed to take advantage of its early advantage in this area, specifically by not diversifying the number of radio frequencies its drones use to transmit signals.
Therefore, once Russia improves its electronic warfare (EW) technology, it will only need to jam two frequencies to significantly weaken Ukraine’s ability to fly drones behind Russian defenses.
Additionally, Kapuyuk wrote that Russia’s tactical air defense personnel have greatly improved, and Moscow continues to benefit from its leadership in the development of fiber-optic drones that are immune to Ukraine’s own electronic warfare countermeasures because they do not transmit signals.
There is also the manpower problem in Ukraine.
The infantry shortage was well known. Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Institute estimates that there are fewer than ten Ukrainian infantrymen per kilometer of the front. He also estimated that most brigades had at most 10 percent of their infantry personnel. Traditionally, this number would be over 30%.
Lee told KI Insights, a strategic intelligence agency backed by the Kyiv Independent, that even such low numbers would be enough to prevent a major breakthrough by Russian forces, which have only made small, incremental gains.
But in a war where drones, not infantry, matter most, Ukraine’s shortage of drone crews is most pressing, especially in the critical depth of combat battles of destroying targets within 25 miles (40 kilometers) behind the battle lines.
The commander of Ukraine’s drone force, Robert Brovdy, last week offered a blunt defense of the fighter jets he commands, saying the number of drone operators needs to triple. He wrote on his Facebook page that currently only 30% of the front line, which stretches 745 miles, is covered.
New Defense Minister Fedorov acknowledged the seriousness of the problem, telling Ukraine’s parliament that some 2 million people ignored conscription documents and another 200,000 deserted.
Much now depends on his ability to solve manpower problems and regain Ukraine’s technological edge while ensuring he can achieve Zelensky’s goals.
“Unless we continue to be ahead of Russia technically and tactically, I can’t 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.
