July 18, 2025: Russia is short of cash and economic resources. The only useful allies are China and North Korea. Making the most of this, Russia has established a program to instruct 600 Chinese military personnel. The lessons would include details on how the Ukraine War was and is fought and lessons learned by the Russians so far. Taiwan is known to be studying the use of drones in Ukraine and planning to adapt those lessons to use drones to defend against Chinese attack.

While China has the second largest economy in the world, after the United States, its armed forces are untested, inexperienced and riddled with corruption. Despite that, China is Russia’s most valuable trading partner. While refusing to sell Russia weapons, to avoid being hit with economic sanctions, China still depends on Russia for assistance in handling some forms of advanced technology. This has been the case for over 80 years, and will remain so for at least a few more decades. If Russia loses the Ukraine war, there might be a change of government in Russia that is more pro-West and anti-China.

It's unknown how much Russia is getting paid, but it is apparently substantial enough to pull experienced Russian officers and sergeants out of Ukraine to instruct the Chinese.

Russia will also reveal what they have learned of Ukrainian operations. Ukrainians have been fighting the Russians for over three years and are seeking to institutionalize their military lessons learned. The Russians are now short of resources and still operate under economic sanctions. Ukraine believes that with improved training for all their personnel, they will reduce their own casualties while increasing those of the Russians. Vladimir Putin vowed to keep fighting for as long as it took. That is turning into an empty promise as Putin discovers that a crash in troop quality makes any Russian military efforts futile and prohibitively costly in terms of men and resources.

The Russians officially called their invasion a special operation meant to liberate the Ukrainians from neo-Nazi and NATO influence. Most Russian troops soon realized that the Ukrainians were more enthusiastic and determined to defend their country from foreign invaders and wanted to join NATO to discourage Russian attacks. Government corruption and inept military leadership meant the Russian troops were poorly supplied with food, medical care and ammunition. New recruits were not trained or paid the cash bonuses promised. Troop morale plummeted because of this and soon Russia found it could not obtain enough troops to keep the special operation going. The Ukrainians went on the offensive and rapidly drove the Russians out of much of the Ukrainian territory they had conquered in 2014 and early 2022. The Russian government did not want to admit they were losing but were unable to convince enough Russian soldiers to resist or Russians and Ukrainian collaborators living in the occupied territories to stay. The civilians fled and the Russian troop numbers dwindled. All this had nothing to do with foreign observers asserting that tanks were obsolete and warfare had changed dramatically. Neither was true but the reality was less newsworthy, so the situation was not reported accurately. The Ukrainians kept attacking Russian logistics while improving their techniques for supplying their troops. This was the key to victory but made for dull headlines.

It’s unclear if Russia is going to teach the Chinese how incompetent Russia has been at supplying their own troops. The Ukrainians increasingly take advantage of Russian supply problems and developed tactics that often ensure Russian troops cannot obtain resupply of food, munitions, medical care, or anything else. This is done with long-range drones to disrupt truck and railway movement of supplies into Ukraine and then swarms of short-range drones to prevent supplies from moving the last few kilometers to the desperate Russian troops. Ukraine cannot do this everywhere along the more than thousand kilometers of the front line. But the Ukrainians have and continue to apply these supply denial tactics regularly where they will do the most damage to Russian forces.