August 11, 2025: Two months ago Russia began an effort to disrupt Ukrainian recruiting by sending drones to destroy recruiting stations. This is an effort to disrupt recruiting efforts and destroy records of who prospects are and who has recently signed up. Attacks also caused casualties among recruiters, prospective recruits and nearby civilians. Only a few attacks have been made because the short range of the drones means that only recruiting stations near the Russian border are vulnerable. This effort does not appear to have had any impact on recruiting. Some Ukrainian recruits remarked about how the war came to them before they could get to the front and do any actual fighting.

These attacks are part of a Russian effort to demoralize Ukrainian civilians and reduce popular support for the war. While most Ukrainians are war weary by now, few want to abandon efforts to defend their homeland. Meanwhile the war has become one of attrition and the Russians are losing. So far Russia has suffered over a million losses in the form of dead, disabled, missing and deserters. There are also a growing number of Russian men who continue to evade army service or leave Russia. Ukrainian men were eager to volunteer initially, but after a year, news of the Ukrainian losses and relentless Russian attacks began to discourage Ukrainian men from serving. By the end of 2024, nearly 70,000 soldiers had died, with three times as many more wounded or missing.

Ukraine used a series of clever moves to maintain their troop numbers despite growing losses and increased reluctance of Ukrainian men to serve. Among the policies eventually implemented were months of training for new soldiers, tactics that minimized Ukrainian casualties and periodic rotation of experienced combat troops out of the front lines for weeks of rest and retraining. Soon news of these policies reached young men facing mobilization into the military. The new policies reduced resistance to serving. The policy was summed up as, “Ukrainian soldiers are not trained to die.” But a lot of them did anyway. War is like that.

The Ukrainians excelled at defensive tactics that took maximum advantage of Russian frontal assaults. Ukrainian drones had eliminated most Russian tanks by 2023, and by 2025 drones were responsible for over 70 percent of Russian casualties. Ukrainian losses soon followed a similar pattern, but with far fewer losses. When the Ukrainians went on the offensive the attacking troops were accompanied by intense and continuous use of drones and automated ground weapons. Currently Ukraine is often using just drones and remotely controlled robotic ground combat vehicles for attacks. In at least one instance, Russians surrendered to their robot attackers.

Ukraine also developed special operations forces. In 2016 Ukraine, as part of ongoing military reforms and reorganization, created a Jaeger light infantry brigade. This unit was part of Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. The Jager brigade uses an existing infantry brigade but replaces conscripts with upgraded volunteers. The Jaegers received upgraded equipment and intensive training. The Jagers were assigned to provide security, and timely intelligence, about what is happening along several hundred kilometers of the northern border with Belarus and Russia.

The Jagers gathered information that helped the Ukrainians win and the Russians endure more losses. The Ukrainian policy was to minimize casualties while the Russians were willing to endure heavy losses to advance. By the end of 2024 the Russians were running out of troops and bringing in North Korea mercenaries to keep their offensive forces up to strength. Ukraine was building four million drones a year.

Back in Russia questions are raised about the wisdom of continuing the war with less effective forces. It may not be wise, but it’s what leader Vladimir Putin wanted and, so far, there is no one to stop him from continuing the war. The Putin solution was to offer prospective recruits more money to join and their families' large payments after their sons died. This currently costs about ten percent of the government budget.

And then there is corruption. While Ukraine continues to catch, prosecute and punish corrupt recruiting officials, Russia eliminated anti-corruption laws to enable corrupt officials to evade detection and continue to profit from corrupt practices. This encouraged Ukrainians to keep fighting and Russians to resist getting mobilized into the military. It also encourages more Russians to sabotage the war effort via individual efforts. The Russian war effort is often disrupted by individual actions against railroad signal systems. This is easy to do and difficult to prevent. Russian mothers organize effective protests against the war, as they have been doing in the 1980s. Russia is increasingly at war with itself as well as Ukraine.