Ratio of Losses To Gains Reverses For Russia As Ukraine Takes Attritional Lead

Ukraine has succeeded in reversing Russia's advantage in losses to gains as its increasingly effective drone strategy, combined with artillery, armor and infantry coordination hits Russian forces further and further behind the lines, making it difficult for them to get to the front, let alone launch attacks. JL

Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack:

After almost a full year of stories about how Ukraine was on the verge of collapse, since 1 January 2025, Russian advances have been miniscule and increasingly slowing, while Russian losses have stayed exceptionally high. The trend of losses to gains has gone in reverse for Russia. The mass production of drones - combined with artillery and manpads - handed Ukraine an attritional advantage at the end of 2024 and into 2025. The Russians are being engaged further behind the lines by Ukrainian UAVs that make offensive action not only difficult, but extremely costly.
The Russians started a Spring Offensive a few weeks ago, and so far they have little to show for it. Russian advances have been small and extremely costly for them. Reports are that Russian forces are running short of some vehicles.

 

After almost a full year of stories about how Ukraine was on the verge of collapse, since 1 January 2025, Russian advances have been miniscule, while Russian losses have stayed exceptionally high. In other words, the trend of losses to gains has gone in reverse for Russia.

Here is a map of the main Donbas area of the front (centering on Pokrovsk) on January 1, 2025.

And here it is today—one small Russian advance around Kurakhove of less than 10 miles—but otherwise hardly any movement.

The even more telling thing is that this one gain happened early in 2025, Over the past 2-3 weeks, which has seen the start of a new Russian offensive, with attack numbers up across different parts of the line—Russian advances have been almost indiscernible. A kilometer here and there, but nothing of note.

And Russian losses have remained extremely high as Russian gains have slowed. In the last few months Russian soldier losses have averaged around 1200-1500 per day and there are indications that the vehicle crunch that Russia was going to face when it started running out of usable vehicle in storage was approaching. Certainly, Russian tanks are becoming much scarcer and scarcer on the battlefield.

The reality of the war is that the mass production of drones—combined with legacy defensive weapons systems such as artillery and manpads—were handing Ukraine an attritional advantage at the end of 2024 and into 2025. The Russians were being engaged further and further behind the lines by Ukrainian UAVs that made any kind of large offensive action not only difficult, but extremely costly.

This trend was not something that should have been a surprise, and as Eliot Cohen and I argued in the Atlantic—Ukraine had the ability to turn the attritional struggle to its advantage. Since that piece came out in early March, its basic argument has been shown to be right. Russia has limited resources and Ukraine has an opportunity in an attritional struggle,

The problem, as that article highlighted, was that the Trump administration seemed more than willing to throw those advantages away for Ukraine. And that is where we find ourselves now. The first few months of 2025 have shown that Ukraine was nowhere near collapse, that Russian advances were not to be unstoppable and inexorable, and that Ukraine is actually capable of winning the war.

The big change in the war is that the USA is no longer a supporter of Ukraine under Trump. No new aid has been approved and the administration seems set on getting a good deal for Putin—which includes putting massive pressure on Ukraine.

In other words, if Donald Trump had not been elected President and the USA has stayed as a strong supporter of Ukraine, willing to provide a great deal of military aid to Ukraine while ramping up sanctions on Russia, Ukraine could have planned on a 2025 in which they inflicted massive losses on a Russian war machine.

Now, however, we have a USA trying to help Putin—and that is the single most important development in the war. It could take what was an improving position for Ukraine and help Russia a great deal. Just as Russian advances are increasingly slowing, the Russians can look forward to getting back to business with the USA soon (which will have second and third order effects on other countries that could be very ominous for Europe). The American people have done Putin a great service.