Update from the Battlefield: Drones, Distance, and Diminishing Returns for Russia

**Ryan Evans** (0:09)
You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I founded War on the Rocks, and I'm sitting here with Mike Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And we're here to talk about the war in Ukraine, even though there's a war in Iran. This war between Ukraine and Russia certainly hasn't stopped or even slowed down much. So Mike, you were in Ukraine, what, two months ago now? A month ago?

**Michael Kofman** (0:33)
About a month ago, a little less than a month ago, actually. I came back mid-March.

**Ryan Evans** (0:37)
And what were some of the big takeaways in terms of top level strategic issues of how the war is going?

**Michael Kofman** (0:42)
So for me, the big takeaways were first, Ukraine is actually doing quite better than expected. The front stabilized around the winter as usual, but coming out of the winter and early spring, Russian forces began mechanized assaults again, but they haven't been doing that well.

**Ryan Evans** (0:57)
Why is that?

**Michael Kofman** (0:59)
So first, I think that the Russian military has just not been able to generate substantial reserves or expand the force, given the losses they've been taking over the course of 2025 I think they can sustain the fight maybe at this intensity or a bit less, but it's increasingly clear that they can't do significantly more or better, at least right now, than the way we saw them perform last year. Second, Ukraine is getting better and better at general employment even though they have to some extent lost their advantages in this space over the course of 2025

**Ryan Evans** (1:35)
Well, let's dig into that. What were those advantages and how did they lose them?

**Michael Kofman** (1:38)
So the thrust of the fight at the tactical level last year was really a tug of war over this kill zone, which is the drone engagement zone that's sometimes 15 kilometers or up to 25 from the front line. And last year started out with Ukraine having big advantages and Russia eventually got better both on how they were employing drones, trying to put out their own version of line of drones, the Ukrainian initiative, and also just in sheer numbers, clawing back some of those advantages. And so the year ended with relative parity between the two sides, but even though that was a negative trend, you just didn't see the Russian military be able to capitalize it or be able to leverage infiltration tactics for any real significant advances. And a big reason for that is just the way they've been fighting, either infiltration to individual soldiers or small infantry groups or mortarized attacks, they're just not conducive to getting any kind of breakthroughs.

**Ryan Evans** (2:32)
I'd like to dig into that because this reminds me, and correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, because I very well might be an off and am. But a lot of these infiltration tactics were pioneered by the Wagner group earlier in the war, especially around the Battle of Bakhmut, where they would send these smaller units in to try to get behind enemy lines and create vulnerabilities. And then when, of course, Wagner became absorbed by the Russian armed forces, would you say it's fair, if I'm right so far, that these infiltration tactics became more widespread in terms of how Russia tried to launch these?

**Michael Kofman** (3:03)
I'd agree part way, which is say Wagner pioneered assault groups, small assault groups, 68 men, and the use of comics in particular, and the use of assault companies that would break down into these assault groups and assault detachments.

**Ryan Evans** (3:18)
So smaller units trying to sort of sneak through the front.

**Michael Kofman** (3:21)
Yes, and Wagner pioneered this sort of grinding approach.
And they developed a system for using folks that had very little training, for employing people that had very little training and very harsh draconian tactics. And then after 2023, you saw a kind of Wagnerization of the Russian military, where the regular Russian units then all have assault companies of convicts, and then they have assault companies and assault detachments of newly contracted personnel. They only have something like two weeks of training, and they have a clear set up system for how they're going to employ them. And they go from small assault groups of six state men to then in 2025, you begin to see maybe a whole platoon, but advancing as individual soldiers or pairs, or individual soldiers being guided by drone, by Mavic. Two lines, because Ukraine doesn't have cohesive lines at this point. And them just trying to figure out, okay, where are Ukrainian forward positions? And then when they see anybody be able to walk through them, then sending more people along that path until they accumulate in the rear. And so what happened by the time we get to this point in the war is that most of the fight is not between infantry or soldiers at all on the ground. It is about the drone units of one side, their fire support, their artillery, but particularly their drone units, being able to displace the drone units of the other side. And once they're able to suppress them, and they're able to displace them to push out that support, then the line shifts because there is no line. There's just a gray zone between the two sides. There isn't the sort of cohesive defensive lines between Russian and Ukrainian forces. And so this trend kind of further progressed into 2026 So now when you talk to colleagues on who took how much territory last month in March, the answer varies considerably. You know, deep state Ukrainian sites shows Russia taking maybe 160 kilometers because they basically raided the Russian advance in a certain way, and they had most of the advances previously be a gray zone. And Finnish colleagues who also do the mapping raided the Russian advance as 25 square kilometers, as in that total advance, because they mapped it differently, because there's such a large gray zone that three different mapping organizations can look at it and give you very different numbers at this point.