Matthew Luxmoore reports in the Wall Street Journal:
An ex-convict missing part of his right arm and two titanium plates in his head was at the tip of Russia’s spear, trying to pierce Ukraine’s defenses in the kind of infantry assault that is yielding meager gains and heavy losses for Russian troops. "Much of the land gained via these tactics becomes a gray zone they do not fully control.” Losses are so heavy that many in the Russian army think the war is a deliberate campaign to purge society of those on its lowest rungs, culling the downtrodden, the homeless, and the prison population. “The approach is yielding diminishing gains." Ukrainian soldiers are baffled by the number of Russians pressing forward under fire as their drones have become more precise and deadly. A year ago they killed an average of 20 Russians a day. Now, that number is 50 to 60.An ex-convict who is missing part of his right arm and has two titanium plates in his head, Vyacheslav Kudryashev might not seem like the best soldier to put in the vanguard of a military offensive.
But for four days last year, he was at the tip of Russia’s spear, trying to pierce Ukraine’s defenses in the kind of infantry assault that is yielding meager gains and heavy losses for Russian troops.
After more than four years of war, Russian President Vladimir Putin is far from achieving his goal of dominating Ukraine and facing mounting criticism at home. Russian forces are struggling to advance on the battlefield despite some 25,000 wounded and dead a month, say Western officials and military analysts. Russia’s halting progress suggests that taking the coveted eastern Donbas province could take years—and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Kudryashev said a commander dispatched him and another foot soldier with the goal of reaching a point in a forest near Kreminna in eastern Ukraine. Their task was to survive long enough for others to join them and drag the Russian front line forward a few dozen more yards.
Things soon went wrong. Kudryashev lost his radio as he sought to evade Ukrainian explosive drones. Unsure of his location and with no contact with his unit, he stayed there with his comrade until Ukrainian troops found them and took them captive.
“The Ukrainians could have killed us right there—no one would have known we were dead,” said Kudryashev, who is now in a Ukrainian prisoner-of-war camp, where he spoke with The Wall Street Journal. He spent 18 months recovering in 2023 after a Ukrainian tank round hit a garage where he was preparing mortar shells, flinging him against a wall and cracking his skull. He has a prominent scar running across the top of his head from the surgery. A large piece of shrapnel went through his right forearm, which doctors later patched up using tissue from his belly.
Kudryashev’s short stint last year in the vanguard of Russia’s army offers a glimpse of the tactics that Russia is employing to eke out battlefield advances in Ukraine. Faced with thousands of Ukrainian drones that spot and target almost any moving thing along the front lines, Russia has largely abandoned trying to advance using armored vehicles. Instead, it uses a tactic known as “infiltration,” by sending pairs of foot soldiers on often hopeless forays into a gray zone where neither side has effective control and infantry from both armies seek to stay alive.
The tactic helped secure small gains this year of around 3 square miles a day, or just over twice the size of Central Park—far from the kind of advances that would support Putin’s claims that Russian victory is inevitable and that the Trump administration should encourage a Ukrainian capitulation. Putin has in recent months faced growing criticism over internet restrictions in Russia and the stalled effort in Ukraine. After presiding Saturday over a Red Square military parade that was scaled down amid threats of Ukrainian drone attacks, he reiterated his commitment to a Russian victory but also suggested the war was drawing to a close.
There are signs that his army’s methods are losing even their limited effectiveness. Losses are so heavy that Kudryashev, a former heroin addict who was jailed on drug charges after his previous front-line stint and injury and rejoined the army in return for freedom after six months’ service, said he and many in the Russian army think the war is a deliberate campaign to purge society of those on its lowest rungs, culling the downtrodden, the homeless, and the prison population.
“They’re saving on equipment but hemorrhaging men instead. The approach is yielding diminishing gains,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank. “In addition, much of the land gained via these tactics becomes a gray zone they do not fully control.”
Ukrainian soldiers are baffled by the number of Russians pressing forward under fire. Oleh Shiryayev, commander of Ukraine’s 225th Separate Assault Regiment, which is holding back Russian assaults in the southeast, said that a year ago his unit killed an average of 20 Russians a day. Now, he estimates that number at 50 to 60. “They are suffering losses, but this is a state that has human resources as well as money and oil reserves,” he said. ”They will try to do everything in order to advance further.”
During the first two years of the war, both sides actively deployed armor and large troop formations. But the proliferation of precision drones since 2024 has transformed the fighting. As Russian units launched armored and infantry assaults into what Ukrainians call their “kill zone”—an expanding no-man’s-land overseen by drone pilots—their casualty rates skyrocketed.
Russia shifted tactics in early 2025 toward infiltration, whereby small groups of soldiers are sent through gaps in Ukraine’s defensive lines. They seize patches of land—sometimes as little as part of a tree line or the cellar of a destroyed building—then await the arrival of other troops to expand the pocket and launch further attacks.
The tactic takes advantage of Ukraine’s personnel deficit. But Ukraine has adapted by using drones and artillery to pick off such assault units, and by seeking out Russian squads that manage to get through. The Ukrainian method has been precise and deadly. One video shared by the Ukrainian military in February shows a single Russian soldier targeted by wave after wave of FPV drones—12 in total—until he is finally killed. Hundreds are being taken prisoner. The onset of late spring will make it harder for Ukraine to spot Russian troops in verdant foliage, Kofman cautioned, meaning infiltration is likely to remain an important element of Russia’s coming summer offensive.
To prepare, Russia has pushed to fill the ranks of its military, actively recruiting from prisons and, most recently, among university students. It has also sent wounded men unfit for battle into the fight. But analysts say the replenishments now barely make up for the mounting losses.
Troops sent on infiltration missions are often ex-convicts given only days of training, since walking to an assigned location and awaiting further orders requires minimal proficiency, Kofman said. But some flout their commanders’ orders in efforts to maximize their chances of survival. A 50-year-old Russian soldier who is now a prisoner in Ukraine said he spent days moving from point to point with one other soldier, receiving instructions over the radio from a battalion commander he had never met. But instead of moving quickly in a straight line, as instructed, the men moved slowly and zigzagged through the forest to avoid leaving a clear trail. The soldier, a native of the ex-Soviet republic of Uzbekistan who gave his name only as Bakhtiyor, said he walked 13 miles circuitously to reach a point located 4 miles away.
It was via the radio that he learned that each of the pairs that had marched before him was being mowed down by Ukrainian fire. He heard the battalion commander checking in with the groups, asking how they were faring. Each time, there was silence.
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