When Russian armored columns rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow’s confidence was so high, troops packed ceremonial parade kits instead of combat supplies.
Instead, Ukrainian units picked apart a stalled 40-mile-long convoy outside Kyiv, an early, brutal sign the invasion would not be the quick victory the Kremlin promised.
Three and a half years on, Moscow is stuck in a war of attrition, sending waves of men to try to breach Ukraine’s “drone wall.”
Embedded with a Ukrainian drone unit, I watched Russian motorcycle detachments riding into open fields — only to be cut down after being spotted.
“They must remember what happened to the last group,” said Andrii of the 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade. “Still, they keep coming.”
Bohdan, a drone pilot from the same brigade, told me he wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians charging ahead were high: “They’re drug users, convicts or people drowning in debt.”
Western hesitation throughout the war to provide Kyiv advanced systems meant commanders improvised.
Babay, the 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade’s Unmanned Systems Battalion’s deputy commander, told me Ukraine was forced to adopt a “poor man’s solution,” stripping hobbyist drones off store shelves and converting them into expendable weapons and eyes in the sky.
Cheap, mass-produced drones became a brutal force multiplier, smashing large armored assaults and ushering in the era of the cautious tank.
Armor is wildly expensive; drones cost next to nothing. When a regime treats human life as expendable, cheap weapons meet cheap tactics, with devastating effect.
British intelligence estimates Russia has suffered well over a million casualties, and Ukraine’s former top general Valerii Zaluzhnyi says drones account for 80% of Russian battlefield losses.
Even President Trump has repeatedly highlighted Russia’s heavy toll; he said Tuesday Moscow had “lost a million and a half” soldiers.
Robert Brovdi, known by his callsign, Magyar, and commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems, said the drone wall will grow and be “a wall taller than the Great Wall of China.”
Moscow has resorted to waves of infantry assaults that first-person-view drones and artillery shred.
Commanders’ cruelty extends to torturing troops who refuse orders, using barrier detachments to shoot deserters and assigning convicts and punished soldiers to suicidal assaults.
With medical evacuation scarce and reprisals real, dozens of Russian servicemen have reportedly taken their own lives rather than face another frontline onslaught.
A Russian war correspondent complained that thanks to Ukrainian drones, the chances of even reaching the front lines are 50-50 and a Russian assault soldier’s life expectancy is about 12 days.
The Institute for the Study of War estimated in late 2024 those tactics cost Russia more than 50 soldiers for every square kilometer of ground gained.
“They’re taking land, but at such a cost that no army can afford it. They’re losing a tremendous number of troops,” said Andrii.
Taras Kuzio, a National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy professor, told me, “Zaluzhnyi thought that after 150,000 casualties Russians would say, ‘Enough,’ but they haven’t.”
Deep State reports that in September, the full-scale war’s 43rd month, Russian forces captured just 259 square kilometers, roughly 100 square miles, of Ukrainian territory.
That’s a 44% drop from August and the smallest monthly gain since May, equal to 0.04% of Ukraine’s land.
Inside Russia, recruitment has reached a breaking point.
As former Ukrainian officer and open-source analyst Tatarigami observed, Moscow is resorting to “increasingly drastic measures,” coercing conscripts and detainees and even pressuring businesses to supply soldiers.
In Russia’s Primorsky region, officials reportedly ordered employers to either send workers to the front or contribute financially to the war effort. In Voronezh Oblast, governors have raised signing bonuses to record highs, up to 2.5 million rubles ($27,000), while banners outside enlistment offices advertise contracts worth 6 million rubles ($73,000).
Regional budget data show recruitment remained stable through 2025’s third quarter, sustained only by record-high enlistment bonuses and soaring regional spending.
Russia’s government approved a bill last Monday expanding the use of reservists for “defense-related tasks” in peacetime, effectively giving the military authority to call them up far more broadly than before.
The Kremlin is also duping African and Arab civilians to come to Russia, only to send them to the front. Thousands of North Koreans went to help fight, in a show of support from the modern axis of evil.
But “deathonomics” has created a wartime middle class whose pay, bonuses and social perks depend on the fighting, leaving many Russians with a financial stake in keeping the war going and sending their sons and fathers to die for the money, if they even receive any.
Kyiv realized Moscow values oil more than lives and put its drones to work on refineries the past two years.
Oleksandra Ustinova, a Holos party lawmaker, told me: “Victory won’t come from just one factor, it’s going to be the cumulative effect of battlefield achievements, sanctions, political disruption and the broader effort to reveal Russia’s vulnerabilities to the world.”
By September’s end, about 40% of Russia’s refining capacity was offline, and oil and gas export revenues fell roughly 25% year-on-year, forcing higher taxes and social cuts.
Less oil money means fewer soldiers.
Indeed, with thinner coffers Moscow can’t sustain juicy enlistment bonuses and payouts, and it may run out of the cash needed to keep feeding the meat grinder.
The Kremlin may try to forcibly conscript unwilling men, but the world remembers how 1917 ended for the Russian imperial regime.
David Kirichenko is a Henry Jackson Society associate research fellow.
Twitter: @DVKirichenko
This story originally appeared on NYPost
