On the frontlines, the situation looks much the same as in prior years. The Russian advance continues apace (slowly), with one or two mid-sized strategic cities (Konstantinovka and Kupyansk) looking likely to be taken this year. After its first year of the conflict with no major counteroffensive action, the AFU launched a minor counterattack on the southern front near Gulyapole. The results of this operation were ambiguous, with the Ukrainians claiming they spoiled a major Russian offensive, but little territory changing hands in absolute terms. To elucidate this, we’ll use two timelapses. Both are from DeepState, an official organ of the Ukrainian government, and one notorious for delaying and underselling Russian gains. Therefore, we can take these as the rosiest possible interpretations of the AFU’s success so far this year. First, the Konstantinovka/Kramatorsk/Slavyank axis since the beginning of the year (consider increasing the playback speed on both of these. The difference in runtime is caused by lag in DeepState’s UI, it’s the same timeframe):

(unfortunately, I'm not managing to download the videos to post them here, and besides we're not supposed to embed videos in the thread for performance reasons anyway, so open up the article to check it out, here's a link with an anchor to the text above in case your browser supports those and can scroll to the appropriate bit: https://www.amerikanets.com/p/pr-war-ramps-up-in-ukraine#%3A%7E%3Atext=it%E2%80%99s+the+same+timeframe)

Next, the southern front, with the Ukrainian counteroffensive:

(link: https://www.amerikanets.com/p/pr-war-ramps-up-in-ukraine#%3A%7E%3Atext=Next%2C+the+southern+front%2C+with+the+Ukrainian+counteroffensive)

DeepState’s maps have become increasingly detached from reality since the Russian capture of Pokrovsk, and the outlet is currently delaying recognition of a widely reported (on both sides) deterioration of the AFU’s position across much of the frontline. Sudden Russian gains in Kupyansk, Vovchansk, Lyman, and Konstantinovka signal a small but strategically relevant shift in the balance of power on the front further towards the Russian advantage. As it stands, there’s little reason to doubt the Russians will take Kramatorsk and Slavyansk eventually, and AFU servicemembers acknowledge this on social media. The Ukrainian drone campaign against Russian logistics nodes echoes the HIMARS campaign of 2022. The game-changer this time is the American Hornet drone, made by Eric Schmidt’s Perennial Autonomy. The drone is cheap, quiet, semi-autonomous, and better constructed than many flawed European and American competitors that have failed in Ukraine. The issue with reading into the new Ukrainian campaign as a strategic turning point in the war is that it’s accompanied by a parallel Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian logistics, and one that’s at least as effective, and has been ongoing for much longer. And while the Hornet seems by all metrics a good drone, it isn’t substantially different from the current state of the art used in existing platforms on both sides, and it remains to be seen if it can be produced in the staggering quantities needed to keep the campaign going for the long term. The strategic Ukrainian strike campaign has generated captivating videos and gasoline shortages, but this was the case for prior campaigns with inconclusive results too. As I’ve written previously, Russia is vulnerable to gasoline shortages because it only produces enough for domestic consumption. Russia can solve this through imports, exactly as Ukraine has. Ukraine imports more than 85% of its light petroleum products (for Russia, the share is typically zero), which exposes the country to supply shocks and drives prices at the pump to nearly double what they are in Russia. With Ukraine’s refining infrastructure long destroyed, Russia has increasingly targeted individual gas stations in Ukraine with long-range drones, in addition to targeting logistics lines with shorter-range drones.

The broad picture here is that whatever Ukraine can achieve with its drone campaigns, the Russians can hit back just as hard or, in most cases, significantly harder. The Ukrainians have no real answer to Russia’s massive deployment of glide bombs or comparatively vast quantities of missiles, a seemingly insurmountable asymmetry. Russian strikes on strategic Ukrainian targets are so constant they no longer make headlines. Occasional deliveries of western missile interceptors put temporary dents in Russian strike packages, but then dwindle. Triumphalist pieces in the western press must answer a simple question: if a Russian air campaign of a given pace has thus far been unable to knock Ukraine out of the war, why would a Ukrainian air campaign of a comparable or smaller size do so to Russia? What’s typically offered here is the bizarre and confused science of Kremlinology. Anonymous “insiders,” western intelligence reports made for public consumption, and exiles ready to tell the press what they want to hear combine to form a chorus that has been proclaiming the imminent collapse of the Putin regime since the first weeks of the war. To be sure, the Russian power structure is not monolithic, and dissatisfaction with the conservative strategy it has used thus far in the war is real, but so poor is the track record of Western analysis on this subject that my position is to discard its claims entirely and treat the internal situation at the highest levels of the Russian government as fundamentally unknowable. Even more mystifying is the idea that a replacement would somehow be less hardline than the notoriously cautious Putin. Instead of reading the tea leaves, let’s break things down in a deliberately simplified analysis of the strategic balance, which has remained unchanged for most of the war. This will not be exhaustive, but it will help elucidate my point.

Ukrainian advantage:

• Ukraine’s military and government are funded externally; it effectively receives military equipment free of charge. It has no need to operate a functioning state economy in the traditional sense.
• Forced mobilization guarantees an influx of personnel.
• Much of the AFU’s logistic chain is outside Ukraine, where Russia so far refuses to strike.
• Sanctions punish the Russian economy at no cost to Ukraine.

Russian advantage:

• Russia’s manpower pool is around five times larger than Ukraine’s, though without conscription, much of this pool is untouched. This allows an all-volunteer army, reducing domestic tensions and the perceived costs of war.
• A massive advantage in glide bombs, non-drone standoff weapons, and air power.
• Russia’s huge territory makes some infrastructure very hard for Ukraine to hit, while Russia can easily hit any target in Ukraine.
• The Russian defense industry has punched well above its weight, even outproducing what NATO is able or willing to send Ukraine in key areas like artillery shells, air defense interceptors, and long-range missiles.
• Russian economic planning and workarounds have offset a surprising amount of damage from sanctions.

After the chaos and territorial reshuffling in the opening phase of the war, little has changed here, and the result is a grinding Russian advance that will eventually take all of the Donbass unless something dramatic shifts. Ukrainian hopes that Russia will sue for peace without such a shift lack justification. Any edge in drone technology will eventually be obtained by the other side. By way of example, the deployment of Russia’s Rassvet satellite constellation is underway, eroding the most important Ukrainian edge in the drone war: its exclusive use of Starlink since the beginning of this year. Nullification of one or more of Russia’s strategic advantages will be necessary if the Ukrainians seek to truly “turn the tide” of the war.

PR War

For a keen and long-term observer of the war, the sudden ramp-up of triumphalist narratives in both the mainstream and social media is obvious. Influencers sound the alarm on coups in the Kremlin (attributed to sources that say no such thing), murdered generals (retired, known to be sick, in their 70s), a vanishing Lukashenko (he made public appearances hours afterwards), and so on. Even real Ukrainian drones hitting structures in Moscow appear to be overloaded with fuel to cause the most dramatic explosion possible (note: I was in Moscow during the largest drone attack in two years - I didn’t realize it had happened until I opened Telegram hours later. It’s a big city). All of this plays much the same as similar campaigns of the past, featuring starving Russian soldiers and an AFU poised to roll all the way to Crimea. The question, then, is why now? If a large, international public relations apparatus has been spun up and is firing on all cylinders at this point in time, as opposed to three or six months ago, there must be a reason. While the Ukrainians claim they hope to force the Russians into agreeing to a ceasefire imminently, this seems fantastical. We’ll explore some of the other possibilities below.