Russia Lost A Third Of Its Forces In Ukraine. Now It’s Losing The War.

In the 82 days since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, the Russian military has lost a third of its forces, according to the U.K. Defense Ministry.

That’s tens of thousands of dead soldiers, sailors and airmen plus thousands of wrecked armored vehicles, a dozen sunk or damaged ships and boats and more than a hundred shot-down aircraft.

The heavy losses are contributing to a spiral of declining combat effectiveness. As Russia writes off more and more of its best weaponry and buries more of its best-trained troops, it increasingly counts on old weapons and under-trained troops to sustain its war effort.

But obsolescent weapons and second-tier troops get blown up and killed even faster than do the modern and first-line weapons and troops they replaced. It’s not for no reason that, with each passing week, the Kremlin ratchets down its war aims.

In late February, the Russians simultaneously attacked along four fronts—in Ukraine’s north around the capital Kyiv, in the northeast around Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, in the east from separatist-controlled Donbas and in the south along an axis aiming for Odesa, Ukraine’s biggest port.

Facing stiff Ukrainian resistance, the Kyiv offensive stalled out after a month then reversed. Russian formations in mid-April retreated back to Belarus and southern Russia.

Some of the more-intact battalions then shifted east and south. But offensives on those fronts faltered, too. After halting the Russians in the Kharkiv suburbs, Ukrainian brigades counterattacked—and now are pushing the last few Russian battalions out of the northeast.

Simultaneously, Ukrainian counteroffensives slowly are rolling back Russian gains in the south around Kherson and in some areas around Izium, the locus of Russian efforts in Donbas.

As recently as a few weeks ago, many analysts gave the Russian army an even chance of encircling Ukrainian forces in Donbas and achieving its goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine.

A Russian victory no longer seems likely, or even plausible. “Russia’s Donbas offensive has lost momentum and fallen significantly behind schedule,” the U.K. Defense Ministry concluded on Sunday. “Despite small-scale initial advances, Russia has failed to achieve substantial territorial gains over the past month whilst sustaining consistently high levels of attrition.”

It’s not hard to explain Russia’s military failures. The army deployed around 125 battalion tactical groups with more than 100,000 troops—the majority of its active ground force—for the Ukraine campaign. But these BTGs never had enough trained infantry to support the tanks and artillery.

Tanks rolled unprotected along highways, all but inviting Ukrainian missile teams and artillery gunners to ambush them. The analysts at Oryx blog have confirmed the destruction of 361 Russian tanks. The Ukrainians have captured another 239 Russian tanks that Oryx can confirm.

That’s a fifth of the tanks the Russian army had in service before the war. As more of the best T-90 and T-72B3 tanks explode, often hurling their turrets straight into the air, the Kremlin increasingly is sending 1979-vintage T-72As into the fight—and losing them in large numbers, too.

The Russian air force never achieved lasting air-superiority over Ukraine, owing in equal measure to rigid doctrine, munitions shortfalls and heroic resistance by Ukrainian air-defense troops.

Three months into the war, Ukrainian missileers still are shooting down Russian fighters and drones. Ukrainian pilots still are flying attack sorties. Ukraine’s TB-2 drones range across the war zone and deep into the Black Sea, sniping at Russian command posts and warships with their laser-guided missiles.

“Russian occupiers suffered significant losses in manpower and equipment,” the Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff reported on Sunday. “In some areas, the staffing of units … is less than 20 percent.”

Russia does not have a deep reserve of professional infantry. To make good its losses, it increasingly relies on conscripts from the separatist “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk in Donbas. But these separatists are old or very young, poorly trained and—owing in part to the effects of foreign sanctions on Russian industry—equipped with museum-age castoffs.

One notorious video that circulated on social media depicts separatist conscripts wearing steel helmets and carrying Mosin bolt-action rifles. Both the helmets and rifles are from the 1950s. It should go without saying that these conscripts die at a high rate in clashes with well-equipped Ukrainian troops.

Russia supports large mercenary firms, in particular the shadowy Wagner Group with its thousands of former Russian soldiers. Moscow reportedly has arranged for a thousand or more Wagner mercs to reinforce battered battalions in Donbas. “Units of the airborne troops of the armed forces of the Russian Federation are teaming up with representatives of Russian private military companies for further action,” the Ukrainian general staff reported.

Not everyone with Wagner ties thinks it’s a winning proposition. Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner employee who fought in Donbas and Syria before quitting the company in 2019 and moving to France, told Reuters he rejected an offer to rejoin Wagner for the current campaign in Ukraine.

When the recruiters assured him the Ukrainians were unprepared to defend their country, Gabidullin shot back. “I told them: ‘Guys, that’s a mistake.’”

Ukraine has suffered losses, too. Thousands of soldiers. Hundreds of tanks and other armored vehicles. Dozens of aircraft. All its major warships. But Ukraine enjoys several advantages over its attacker that mitigate its losses.

Ukraine’s supply lines are short and robust where Russia’s are long and fragile. Kyiv has strong allies who are spending tens of billions of dollars to equip Ukrainian troops with the latest and best weaponry. Most importantly, Ukraine is a big country with millions of military-age men and women, many of whom are strongly motivated to enlist. Kyiv doesn’t need to draft separatists or pay mercenaries to sustain its war effort.

The fundamentals of the conflict weren’t in Russia’s favor back in mid-February, before the first Russian battalion crossed the border, bound for defeat in the Kyiv suburbs. That hasn’t changed.

With Ukrainian forces counterattacking across the remaining three fronts of the wider war and Russian forces struggling to advance more than a few miles per week along one brittle axis, it’s clear who has the momentum.