Russia Is Stumbling On the Battlefield As Ukraine Turns the Tables

It is almost impossible to find an article written in the last month which doesn't characterize Russia's Ukraine war effort as weak, stalled or fumbling. 

The implication is that Russia is not only no longer capable of beating Ukraine but may be in danger of losing. Rumors that Putin is contemplating attacking one or all of the EU 's Baltic countries are based on the theory that NATO is now weaker than Ukraine. JL 

The Economist reports:

Moscow's diminished 'victory' parade was an accurate reflection of Russia’s battlefield setbacks, and of Russia’s fear of the growing effectiveness of Ukraine’s long-range strikes. For the first time in three years the initiative has shifted in favor of Ukraine. Having got through a harsh winter, Ukraine is now turning the tide. It is imposing increasing costs on Russia by almost every measure. Not only has Russia’s spring offensive been a flop, but it lost control of 113 square kilometres over the past 30 days. The Russian dead to wounded ratio is rising due to drones. Russia has been forced to impose restrictions on the size of convoys in Donetsk to make them harder to detect. Russia’s size and Ukraine's systematic campaign to degrade air-defences makes protecting valuable assets impossible. “It’s hard to see how things can improve for Russia. If you’re briefing Putin, it’s a pretty bleak picture.”

"We Are Fighting Russia and We Know Why It Is Losing"

It is almost midway through 2026 and the dominant narrative of this war has become Russia's - and Putin's - weakness. There are many factors contributing to the supplanting of the Kremlin's now widely discredited 'inevitability' line including Ukraine's superior drone warfare and Russia's reduced access to soldiers.

But the most decisive may be the emergence of a cadre of experienced, rational Ukrainian combat leaders who know how to use information and motivate troops. The writing of a brigadier general from most militaries could understandably be written off as mere bloviating, but this one happens to be 34 years old, with four years of brutal combat to guide him. It is the the development of such commanders who are now implementing Ukraine's increasingly successful strategy. JL

Brigadier General Denys Prokopenko reports Ukraine Pravda:

The Russian military command is a rigid, vertical Soviet-style hierarchy, where every step is regulated from above. This system was created not for combat effectiveness, but to ensure political control over the army. Loyalty has always been more important than competence. Such a structure leads to operational paralysis in modern war. Ukrainian forces cultivate a command philosophy based on decentralization and empowerment developed for combat on a dynamic, non-linear battlefield. This war is not just a clash of armies, but the test of two diametrically opposed systems. Ukraine's is a network model built on trust, command culture, morale, social cohesion and the ability to adapt. (The result): a kill zone up to 20 km from the front, ambushes, search and strike operations, fire raids, pinpoint surgical counterattacks, encirclement of Russian units, hundreds of enemy prisoners, Russian equipment, warehouses, etc. burning up to 250 km.

White House Forced To Pivot As Putin's War Failure Becomes Embarrassment

To be clear, the Trump administration would still prefer that Putin prevailed in Ukraine. 

But what's a declining superpower to do about its treasured image of invincibility when the side it has so obviously backed is getting annihilated despite everyone's best efforts? Allies can be useful, but reputation is more important. JL

Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack:

Over the past week, the Trump administration made a number of pivots in its public stance towards Ukraine: trying to start de-Putinizing themselves. Both JD Vance and Marco Rubio were part of this. Vance might be the most pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine member of the administration, boasting his “proudest achievement” was cutting aid to Ukraine - and now he claims Trump, who publicly sneered Ukraine "has no cards," is pro-Ukraine? Rubio lied outright, saying the US has not been bullying Ukraine into taking a bad deal. They are trying to convince the American public the administration is more pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin because the intelligence they are receiving is that Russia is struggling and Ukraine is doing much better, as they now understand everything they said in 2025 was wrong.

Ukraine Lyman Counterattack Shocks Kremlin As Fake Win Claims Exposed

It's come to this: the Russians are so desperate to claim any sort of victory that they are staging "assaults" in towns they have occupied for a long time, then claiming them as new successes. 

The problem, in the internet era, is that everything can be time-stamped and geo-located. So when the Russian command claimed to have 'taken' Borova, near Lyman, the Kremlin was then shocked to learn that the Ukrainians were attacking from there because the reported Russian effort had been staged to given their superiors the good news they craved. JL

David Axe reports in Trench Art and RFU News reports:

On Friday, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps counterattacked north of Lyman (after) Russian sources claimed to have achieved a major advance near Borova, on the Oskil River in Kharkiv oblast. According to Russia, it had broken through Ukrainian defenses, cleared a chain of strongpoints, and entered Borova. (But) open-source intelligence quickly geolocated the footage and discovered the Russian soldiers shown storming houses were not in Borova but 25 kilometers away in long-ago captured Kolomyichykha in Luhansk oblast.

After Kremlin's Spring Offensive Flop, Russians Struggle To Hold and Fall Back

Ukrainian forces are now in the third stage of their 2026 success. In the first, they stopped the Russian late winter and then spring-summer offensives before they even began by destroying troop concentrations and vital logistics, preventing them from getting to the front. Then, the Ukrainians began counterattacking - in Orikhiv, Barova and other sectors.

Now, Russian troops are not just failing to advance, but are being pushed out of previously held positions, some of which they have held for years, as the combination of Ukrainian battleground advances with medium and long range drone or missile attacks further degrades their ability to defend what they have occupied. JL

Vlad Litnarovych reports in United24:

Russian forces are no longer struggling only to advance, but are having trouble holding some existing positions, falling back in parts of southern and eastern Ukraine. “In Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, they are already retreating." That is why Moscow is trying to intensify the psychological and information pressure now (because) the Kremlin understands it cannot sustain the current intensity of missile strikes for long, operating near the peak of its missile capacity. Russia is trying to achieve through fear, hysteria, and intimidation what it has failed to achieve on the battlefield. (But) each new wave of attacks becomes less effective than the previous one, exposing the limits of Russia’s military capacity.

Uber, Others Say AI Spend Hard To Justify As Token Use Rivals Labor Costs

The whispers are growing louder. While it may still be a career risk to question the benefits of AI, the harsh reality is that more executives at more companies are doing so. It is important to note that they are not challenging AI's potential impact - emphasis on potential: what they are raising is the cost benefit equation. They know the cost - boy, do they - but the benefit? In too many cases, eh, not so much.

And given that one of AI's ostensible features is its ability to supplant human employees, that corporate execs are now stating the cost of tokens had driven AI costs up to the level of that much maligned human capital, is thereby threatening a core premise for AI adoption. Silicon Valley hypesters can flame doubters all they want, but when too many leaders' compensation became threatened, there was always going to be pushback. And that has now begun. JL

Cris Tolomia reports in Quartz and Reed Albergotti reports in Semafor:

Uber's COO said the company is struggling to connect its rising AI costs to meaningful gains in consumer-facing products. Uber's engineering leaders concluded that greater token consumption was not yielding a corresponding rise in features delivered. "It's very hard to draw a line between those and, 'now we're producing 25% more features." In April the company exhausted its entire Claude Code budget for 2026 — just four months into the year. That was a "head-exploding moment" about the cost of tokens and what the company gives up to sustain it. Uber is not alone in reassessing its approach to AI usage. The cost of tokens is now competing with the cost of headcount. "Unit costs are going down but aggregate costs are going up." Free AI models are “the gateway drug” to paid versions. “What should we be spending, and how do we measure ROI?” 

Putin's "Senseless Decisions," Security Paranoia Spark Disillusionment

The reports of disillusionment with Putin's leadership just keep coming. From pictures of him like the one at left with his massive phalanx of very large security service protectors to concerns that the faltering Ukraine invasion is being prolonged by senseless, self-destructive decisions abetted by dishonest military reporting, there is a growing sense that he has lost the narrative. 

There are, as of yet, no credible reports of potential coups, but a lingering disappointment with his inability to find a way out that will lead to an unhappy ending for everyone in Russia. JL

Pjotr Sauer and Shaun Walker report in The Guardian:

Putin is entering the most challenging period of his rule. People in his orbit, as well as sources in the Russian business world and western intelligence officials, paint a picture of an isolated leader surrounded by an elite that is disillusioned, both with the faltering war in Ukraine and the economic downturn. “There’s definitely been a shift in mood among the elites...profound disappointment in Putin, a growing sense that some kind of catastrophe is looming. There is a growing realisation that utterly senseless, self-destructive decisions keep being made. People who once defended Putin no longer do. Any sense of a future has disappeared.” The Russian president has meanwhile increased his travel schedule in recent weeks, in an attempt to counter narratives over his security paranoia.