The department referred to an interview with President Vladimir Zelensky to Ukrainian media on November 16. In it, the head of state said that Russian troops are now advancing along the front line in part because of the decline in Ukrainian morale, which is exacerbated by delays in staffing and equipping new brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and providing necessary rest and rotation to Ukrainian defenders on the front line.
Zelenskiy noted the importance of creating new brigades to replace and strengthen the Ukrainian troops currently serving on the front lines. Meanwhile, he said, Russian troops continue to suffer significant manpower losses in exchange for minimal territorial gains. According to the president’s estimates, the Russians are now losing between 1,500 and 2,000 soldiers per day in Ukraine. In his opinion, the enemy is not in a position to sustain the rate of advance while suffering such heavy losses.
ISW believes that Zelenskiy’s admission of morale problems and staffing shortages among front-line Ukrainian infantry indicates that Ukrainian drones are likely to play an important role in defending against and inflicting casualties on Russian troops.
During the interview, Zelensky noted that the Russian offensive in some directions has already slowed down. Ukrainian officials have previously noted that drones from the Ukrainian Armed Forces played a role in slowing the Russian advance to a walking pace.
Russian defense tactics
A Ukrainian drone operator said in August 2024 that Russian troops were able to advance more successfully on Pokrovsk because they carried out ground attacks in groups of two to four soldiers under the cover of trees, making them difficult for Ukrainian UAV operators to detect.
Additional Ukrainian reports indicate that Russian troops began using this tactic more widely in the Pokrovsky direction in September and October 2024. A Russian military blogger and former instructor of Shtorm-Z punitive military units noted on November 16 that these small infantry attacks are not the most effective the tactics to make meaningful progress on rural settlements and fields near Selidovo, where Russian troops have very little cover from Ukrainian drones.
The blogger suggested that Russian troops can now move reinforcements and supplies only when Ukrainian drone operators are deployed on another part of the front. Unspecified “issues,” perhaps related to Ukrainian drone operations or Russian military commanders’ insistence on prohibitively expensive infantry assaults, continue to prevent Russian forces from moving faster along the front line and fully exploiting Ukraine’s manpower shortage, he said.
Successes of unmanned brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
ISW noted that Ukrainian drones also played a critical role in containing Russian mechanized maneuver along the entire front line, especially in early summer 2024, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces faced an acute shortage of artillery due to delays in Western defense support.
Also, successful attacks by Ukrainian drones on Russian armored vehicles in the Pokrovsky direction in June 2024 could have played a certain role in the decision of the Russian military command to limit mechanized attacks in this direction.
“Ukrainian drones played an important role in repelling Russian mechanized attacks in the Kursk and Donetsk regions and near Kupyansk In recent months, Russian troops have sought to innovate and deploy more effective systems to protect armored vehicles and tanks from drones Most “successful ” the Russian mechanized attacks, which were allowed to advance several kilometers, led to significant losses of armored vehicles due to attacks by Ukrainian Defense Forces drones, the report says.
Ukraine’s demonstrated ability to effectively engage Russian mechanized columns has prevented Russian forces from conducting large-scale mechanized breakthroughs and drone operations.
ISW has previously assessed that the Russian military leadership may not be able to come to terms with the current scale and rate of losses of Russian equipment in the coming months and years. This is due to limited defense industrial production in Russia, dwindling stocks of Soviet-era equipment, and the inability of the Russian military to achieve operationally meaningful territorial advances through mechanized maneuvers.
“Further improvements to Ukrainian drones and their continued improvement in integration with ground operations remain critical to Ukraine’s ability to defend against Russian offensives and liberate occupied territory in future counteroffensive operations,” says the Institute for the Study of War.
