Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images
Iran, not Ukraine, is currently at the center of America’s volatile foreign policy. But while the U.S. has shifted its focus elsewhere, Ukraine has been more than holding its own. Its military has increasingly taken the initiative in the country’s east, where small factions of Russian and Ukrainian troops are locked in a hellish form of drone-based hybrid warfare. Ukraine continues to inflict heavy casualties on Russian forces, and has sometimes even clawed back small portions of territory it has lost over the last few years, though major breakthroughs seem all but impossible. Perhaps even more significantly, Ukraine has been able to hit Russia’s interior with drones and missiles, even in Moscow, which has spooked Vladimir Putin and a war-weary public. Still, the oil crisis caused by war in Iran has handed Russia a temporary economic lifeline. (Ukraine’s drone expertise, meanwhile, is suddenly in hot demand in the Middle East.) And Russia continues to bombard Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine two of its most intense attacks have come in the last few days, including a devastating barrage Saturday night.
Since Russia’s invasion, I have periodically checked in with Michael Kofman, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and perhaps the foremost expert on the conflict in the U.S. We spoke once again last week about Ukraine’s improved position, its biggest vulnerabilities, and whether an end to the war might arrive anytime soon.
In other interviews you’ve done recently, you’ve described the fighting in this war as more disorganized and diffuse than ever. What does it look like now?
It’s become a much more difficult battlefield to map because there aren’t really cohesive defensive lines. Often positions are commingled, especially in cities, and there is a substantial grey zone between the two sides where both sides tend to claim degree of presence, but presence does not necessarily confer control on this battlefield. And there’s a fairly low density of infantry forces on the front lines, particularly on the Ukrainian side. So the popularized image from a few years ago, that this is a bit like World War I with trenches plus drones, is simply inaccurate. The battle space hasn’t looked that way at least for the last year or year and a half, if it ever did.
There are defensive positions, and there are lines of defense and defensive barriers, but what they really do is present an obstacle to enemy infantry or enemy vehicles that are primarily destroyed by drones, artillery, and mines. These are not trenches of defensive positions that are being held by a large number of people. And at this point, the contest that really matters is the contest for superiority in what folks colloquially call the kill zone, which means superiority in employing drones on the battlefield. The side that has the advantage in both qualitative and quantitative employment of drones can dictate the initiative and has the ability to displace the drone units and supporting artillery of the other side. And control really shifts not by infantry assaulting the infantry positions of the other side, but by one side being able to effectively suppress and displace the drone units and the supporting artillery units of their opponent.
Is it even possible for Russia to make much progress with this form of warfare?
It’s very unlikely. So far this year, the Russian military is performing quite a bit worse than last year. The rate of gain is barely half of what it was around this time in 2025. They’re not necessarily losing control of terrain, but they’re certainly not gaining it at any significant rate, especially given the substantial casualties they’re taking to try to advance. The way the Russian military has been fighting for some time represents a fundamental trade-off. Infiltration tactics and light motorized attacks with small amounts of infantry are simply not capable of generating any kind of operationally significant breakthroughs. So even when there’s a localized breach of Ukrainian defenses, the Russian military can’t exploit it, can’t generate momentum, and can’t turn that into anything because Ukrainian forces are then able to stabilize the situation and increasingly even counterattack.
What it does allow the Russian military to do is two things. First, they’re able to sustain, or, at least up until this year, had been able to sustain an offensive period roughly from late March all the way to December. Contrary to typical depictions in the press, there is no spring offensive or summer offensive or fall offensive. It is just one offensive that doesn’t really end, other than a short period over the course of the winter. The cycle of Russian offensive operations in this war is a series of mechanized attacks starting from March through April. Then, as foliage and terrain cover returns, the Russian military switches to infiltration tactics, which are more effective and reduces their casualties, and that continues on until about October, when the weather turns poor again, drones are not nearly as effective, and Russian forces try mechanized assault once again. That typically goes on up until November and December.
So in the cycle of combat operations, the trend that can be observed is that Russian casualties last year started to roughly match their monthly recruitment rate, so they’re no longer able to generate reserves or expand the force. And the Ukrainian military has been able to consistently adapt to Russian tactics, such that the Russian forces who are trying to fight in 2026 the way they fought in 2025 are seeing a significantly reduced effectiveness. They are suffering both from the reduced quality of their forces, and the steady improvement in how Ukrainian units are able to employ drones and organize their defense — even if those units themselves still suffer from a lack of manpower and a lack of cohesive defensive lines.
That lack of Ukrainian manpower is something we’ve discussed before as a major problem for them. Have drones been able to counterbalance that?
I think it’s a combination of things. First, the manpower situation in the Ukrainian military has improved slightly. It stabilized over the course of the winter, and the Ukrainian force along the front line is no longer shrinking as it was last year. This is not a dramatic improvement, but it is a notable one. Second, Ukraine has had time to prepare defenses over the course of last year and this year, which, in combination with the growing Ukrainian drone force, is able to present the Russian military with fairly substantial and difficult-to-overcome drone engagement — what you could consider to be a “defeat zone,” essentially. Despite the fact that Ukrainian force presence on the front line is actually very sparse, they are able to control the terrain with drones, artillery, and other prepared defenses.
So the Russian military is seeing reduced effectiveness from attempting the same tactics this year that they did last year and are probably going to be in search of some sort of new approach. But I’m not sure what they will be able to do, because the Ukrainian military has also begun to invest heavily in what folks call “middle strike.” That is the ability to strike at greater operational depth beyond the front lines and into the Russian rear, where Russian forces have up until now been relatively safe in their ability to organize logistics, position, command and control, and conduct various supporting activities. And so now the thrust of the Ukrainian approach is that even though for a while there’s been a relative parity in the kill zone at the tactical level, they’re expanding its footprint steadily over the Russian military’s rear, which I think is going to create a lot of issues for Russian military operations this year.
We’re also getting more clarity about Russian losses. There are recent estimates that they stand at about 350,000 troops killed.
It’s more than that.
What’s your estimate?
I do not have an exact accounting, but my own estimate is over 400,000.
Incredible. Doesn’t that start to hurt on the battlefield as well? Who can they recruit without instituting another draft, which I know is something Putin doesn’t want to do?
On the one hand, Russian recruitment for the past several months seems down compared to 2025, but typically recruitment is lower around winter time and then picks up over the course of summer and fall. I would say, and you may be surprised to hear this, that the Russian military largely met its recruitment goal over last year, because of a combination of contracts being offered, big payouts and bonuses, and also a host of coercive measures. For example, police officers are given a bonus for every person charged who, rather than trying their luck with the Russian justice system, will instead sign up to go to the military operation instead. There’s a host of these schemes.
But the fourth-generation engine that Russia had, the pipeline they’ve created to replace their losses in this war, is visibly struggling to produce the same numbers it did in 2024 and 2025. So they are running into issues, but there are still quite a few people seemingly willing to take contracts and sign up. The challenge is that while the quantity remains, the quality has consistently gone down over the past several years. The way the Russian military has been fighting is by having a consistently regenerated layer of assault troops that they employ with these infiltration tactics, who are then replaced within a couple of weeks by individuals who were recently contracted and have been given barely two weeks, if not less, worth of training.
Russia has been able to terrorize Ukrainian cities with missile and drone strikes for years, and they continue to do so. But increasingly Ukraine has been able to penetrate Russian air defenses with drones, fairly deep into the country. They’ve been able to hit energy infrastructure, military infrastructure, and civilians to some extent. How and why is this happening now?
The answer is straightforward. First, it is the result of a significant increase in the quantity of long-range strike drones that Ukraine now produces and can employ on a monthly basis. The actual sortie size has gotten much larger with a sizable number of decoy drones, and this presents a challenge for Russian air defense to deal with. Second, the qualitative advancements year on year from 2024 are notable. Ukraine is conducting some of these strikes in a much more sophisticated way. And lastly, Ukraine strike campaigns along the front line has created a problem for Russian air defense. That is, the current rate of strikes has been depleting Russian short-range air defense of ammunition, which is a problem that the Ukrainian military itself ran into back in 2024 and had to adapt to.
And Russia simply lacks enough air defenses to cover the length and depth of this vast front line while defending Moscow, which is politically significant, and defending their distributed energy infrastructure. Here, Russia’s size, which in some cases historically has been an advantage, is actually a disadvantage because the span of the country is so vast, it is very easy for sorties of strike drones and cruise missiles to cut corridors to Russian air defense. And it’s very difficult now for Russia to cover its troops along the front line supporting rear areas, Moscow, and all the different energy infrastructure they have. So increasingly, you see the pressure on Russian air defense combined with improvement in Ukraine’s long-range strike coming together for a much more effective campaign.
In previous conversations, we’ve discussed how America won’t let Ukraine use its weapons to strike deep into Russia, and that it has imposed other restrictions on Ukraine. There was always this push and pull with Zelensky asking Biden and then Trump for permission to do more. But these new strikes seem to be homegrown, and not dependent on Western weaponry. Is that right?
I think it’s fair, yes. At this stage, the overwhelming percentage of strikes, if not pretty much all of them, are being done with Ukrainian-produced drones or Ukrainian-produced cruise missiles. Ukraine is trying to increase production of its own ground-launch cruise missile and various types of long-range, one-way attack munitions, but most of these strikes are being done with a large number of one-way attack drones.
The Trump administration is no longer selling weapons to Ukraine — they sell them to NATO allies, who then transfer them to Ukraine. But does Ukraine even need that weaponry to the extent they did before?
These strikes are being done in part thanks to Western capital, which Ukraine still needs. That’s why it was very important for Europeans to issue Eurobonds last year, in order to help sustain and fund the war. You would not have had the stepped-up production of these drones were it not for Western capital working together with Ukraine’s defense industry. Also, there probably is some kind of intelligence support from Western countries to help aid the strikes. But I think at this stage, much of it is being done independently by Ukrainian drone strike units. The U.S., as far as I understand, still plays an important role in supporting Ukraine when it comes to provision of intelligence and coordination of military assistance via the Security Assistance Group Ukraine (SAG-U), working alongside NSATU (NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine), which is another coalition–type mission. The most important things that the United States provides at this point are interceptor missiles for patriot batteries, which are costly and not easy to produce, but remain essential to Ukraine’s ballistic missile defense, and of course parts and components for the various types of systems that have already been provided to the Ukrainian military.
How much has that been screwed up by the Iran war? I know Patriot batteries and other weaponry has been moved there.
I think many of those watching this war are bracing for the Department of Defense to potentially say that once the Iran War is over, that they need to redirect new production ammunitions to replenish the stockpile. So far I’ve not heard of any cutoffs to Ukraine. But there are growing rumblings among U.S. allies that there may be a significant backlog for the various capabilities they had bought from the United States, and that they may not see them for many years.
If Russia keeps struggling, are there any other tactics they could use that worry you? I’m not talking nuclear weapons here, but I figure they would switch up their strategy at some point.
I think it is fair to say that the way the Russian military has been fighting is clearly yielding diminishing returns. That was evident last year. And the bet that the Russian leadership had been making in this war for some time is that if they sustain pressure on a broad front — that is, rather than conducting discrete large scale combat operations, they continue a high intensity of small-scale operations, but on a broad front pressuring the Ukrainian military — that eventually they will achieve a collapse of the front. This has not taken place, and now it looks increasingly unlikely, especially given the way they’re fighting and the way the Ukraine military has adapted.
However, there is a growing challenge, and that is the Russian strike campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. This past fall and winter, Russia conducted a sustained strike campaign against Ukraine’s electricity grid, Ukraine’s power generation, and Ukraine’s ability to provide home heating using gas, which many cities depend on. And this was probably the worst winter, weather-wise, that Ukraine had seen in many years. Unfortunately, the strike campaign inflicted significant damage and some of it is irreparable, which raises big questions on how Ukraine will fare and adapt if this war goes into another winter season.
Having now followed the war since even before it began, I’m confident that Ukraine will get through another winter. But it’s important that we do not get overly fixated on the tactical situation along the front line and miss the other war, which is the strike campaigns between the two countries. Because a country at the end of the day is its people, its economy. Even with defense industrial production, which we just discussed, Ukraine produces a lot of what it needs day-to-day for its battlefield needs. But all that depends on having access to electricity, water, and having people to actually work in these industries. So the other bet that I think Russia has been trying to make is that even if they’re not successful along the front line, they can break Ukraine through a strike campaign. On the one hand, this is a poor bet because the history of bombardment campaigns consistently shows us that in the absence of battlefield successes, a strike and bombardment campaign is unlikely to be effective. The United States, I think, has drawn some lessons on this score in its strike campaign against Iran. It can do a lot, but when it comes to big political aims in the war, long-range, precision-strike campaigns and bombardment doesn’t get you nearly as much as people think it does.
But nonetheless, I am increasingly worried simply looking at the growing number of one-way attack drones — the Russian military employees on average now 6,500 per month — combined with a growing number of ballistic missiles, which are difficult to intercept and currently do not have cheap missile defenses available.
You’ve spent quite a lot of time in Ukraine — I don’t know when you were last there.
February through March.
When Ukraine was really on the back foot in the battlefield a couple of years ago, I remember reading about how Ukrainians were more open to the idea of a ceasefire, maybe even ceding some territory, just in order to end the war. Now they’re in a better position, but Russia continues to kill many civilians. So from what you’ve seen and heard, what’s the appetite to negotiate at the moment?
Ukraine is objectively in a better position. It was actually visibly in a better position last year. In fact, I think some of the perception here in the West is only catching up to what was the battlefield reality over the course of fall and winter.
The last time Ukraine’s situation seemed to be deteriorating was probably fall of 2024, and then it stabilized such that for almost the last year and a half, Ukraine has been doing consistently better than expected. I think the political leadership has a reasonably accurate reading of the military situation and Ukraine’s prospects, and that informs us that Ukraine’s situation is not fragile, Ukraine’s not desperate, and this is why there’s no eagerness to make a deal or sign a ceasefire under onerous or unreasonable terms.
For the Ukrainian population, I can only give you one analyst’s opinion. The sentiment that I pick up is sort of equally exhausted and determined. Nobody going into the fifth year of a conventional war, which has inflicted so many casualties and economic damage on Ukraine, would like to see the war continue. But equally, nobody would like to give up or to surrender to Russia that which Russia demands. And part of the challenge is that the Russian position in negotiations remains frankly unreasonable. It is not tethered to Russian battlefield performance. It is more closely tied to aspirational performance they wish they had rather than how well they’re actually doing.
I know you don’t like to play political analyst, but if Russia keeps making these maximally unreasonable demands and Ukraine doesn’t want to make a deal, where does that leave us? Where we’ve been for the last two years? No prospects of anything?
This has now gone from a war of attrition into one of exhaustion, and both sides in some respect are playing for time. I’ve been of the opinion ever since last year that time is increasingly not on Russia’s side in this war.
Which was their whole bet — that they have many more people than Ukraine, they can go as long as they want, and the West will eventually get exhausted.
Yes, they had greater mobilization potential, and a materiel advantage. They had sustained support from China and later North Korea. And ultimately they assumed that one of two things would happen. Either there would be a collapse of the front on the Ukrainian side, or there would be a collapse of Western support for Ukraine, which would achieve much the same for them in this war. And neither of those two bets have been proven true for the past several years. I think that very likely the base-case scenario is that we have another year of war pushing this conflict into 2027. That’s what many Ukrainian colleagues assume.
Now, there is a possibility that ultimately Putin will change his mind or view of what he can hope to achieve in this conflict. When political leaders get into a prolonged war like this, the costs and the stakes are such that it’s very difficult for them to realize that they don’t really have a good prospect of achieving what they want. They start betting that something will break their way if they just keep the war going. And sometimes that happens, but usually it doesn’t. Usually you’re just throwing good money or good people after bad. So from my point of view, the Ukrainian strategy is to try to make this war futile for Russia and eventually convince Moscow into substantially revising its current negotiating position into something that might be acceptable to Ukraine, and also at the same time attain security guarantees from the United States in order to backstop any future deal. Because I think everyone understands that whatever deal Ukraine makes with Russia is not likely to last as long as Putin’s in power.
And do you have any sense of what kind of deal would be acceptable to Ukraine?
The course the Trump administration has taken is a bit of a problematic one, because they’ve largely positioned negotiation as a land-for-security guarantees deal, focusing on the remaining 24 percent or so of Donetsk, essentially proposing a swap where Ukraine gives territory to Russia and the territory maybe becomes some kind of free economic zone. And in exchange for that, Ukraine would receive security guarantees from the United States. The problem with that approach is that this war was never about Donetsk and cannot principally be resolved by an exchange of land. And there’s no guarantee that after Ukraine gives up Donetsk, Russia won’t simply renew the war later and then lay further claims to Ukrainian territory. The greater problem is that Moscow has larger restrictions that it’s seeking on Ukrainian sovereignty, from limits to the size of the Ukrainian forces to limits on Ukraine’s ability to join Western organizations like NATO, and a host of other demands, which would have to be negotiated beyond just what happens with Donetsk.
So this is the problem of the conversation fixating just on territory, because the territory itself is unlikely to ensure any kind of ceasefire.
And lastly, folks looking at negotiations and the possible parameters of a deal often miss the more technically thorny issue of sequencing and implementation. This is in part where the Minsk Two agreement fell apart. One could potentially make a deal on paper that reads acceptably to all sides, but it’s impossible to implement because of the sequencing challenges. That is, who does what first, who withdraws from where? Is a referendum necessary first for there to be a ceasefire? And these technical issues, which may seem mundane, actually are a better predictor of whether or not any agreement will last, beyond assumptions about anybody’s political sincerity,
Any other thoughts about the war?
The only thing I would add is a bit of uncertainty. Folks should keep in mind that wars are fundamentally unstable systems. We tend to extrapolate where the war is going by where we have been. Tactics and technology in this war tend to evolve every three to four months as both sides innovate and adapt to each other, but there’s also a host of external factors, for example the U.S. war with Iran, that can significantly affect the course of the war down the line, and we can’t easily account for them.
Other conflicts will not necessarily wait for this war to be over. This analysis, or at least what I’ve told you today, is assuming all things being equal. But we also know that the only thing we’re guaranteed in this war is that things will continue to change.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
