Russian advances on the battlefield have largely stalled in 2026, as the Ukrainian military has learned to counter Russian infiltration tactics and Ukrainian drones continue to reap a terrible toll on its advancing infantry. Critically, Ukraine is now killing or seriously wounding more Russian soldiers than the Kremlin can recruit.

According to Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, 35,203 Russian soldiers were “eliminated or seriously wounded” during April for which Russia only managed to occupy an additional 141 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, according to Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState.

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“I don’t think they ever surpassed Ukraine, but I think that for a while, Russia had closed the gap last year,” Lee believes, which was partly responsible for Russian offensive successes in 2025. Russia’s goal of rapidly scaling their own unmanned systems forces have stalled as attempts to recruit younger and tech savvy graduates for their Unmanned Systems Forces (VBS) have largely failed, leaving the Russian military lacking pilots, Putiata says.

“They had a plan to recruit a lot of students, because they’re young, and that’s what you need for drone operators. But for four months they only managed to recruit 16% of their target,” he said.

Joining the Russian military is simply not an attractive prospect for educated young Russians, who are deterred by the well known brutal conditions at the front and the lack of any enforceable guarantees they won’t be used as expendable assault infantry.