Russia’s summer offensive in Ukraine is overwhelmed – but Kyiv will not celebrate

For months, the speech in Kiev was a highly anticipated Russian offensive designed to devour more of the eastern part of Ukraine. So far it has been incredible – but the Russians have made some gains in some areas and greatly strengthened the number of troops.

Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to pursue territorial gains as the ceasefire retreats. Last week, he reiterated one of the main ways for him to invade for no reason.

“I think Russia and the Ukrainian people are one person,” he said. “In this sense, Ukraine is ours.”

Even so, the Ukrainians launched counterattacks in certain regions and are rapidly developing the domestic weapons industry. Russia’s wartime economy faces greater headwinds.

Russian troops are trying to advance in multiple areas of the 1,200 km (746 miles) frontline. Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said there were 111,000 Russian troops in a portion of the front line this week – near the Flashpoint city of Pokrovsk, near Donetsk, with at least 50 clashes a day. Ukrainian General Staff said this is compared to about 70,000 Russian troops in the region.

Syrskyi also claimed that Russian infiltration in the northern part of Sumi has ceased. War Institute – A Washington-based think tank, he said Ukrainian troops have restored some territory in Sumy and the pace of Russian progress has slowed down.

“We can say that the wave of attempts to ‘summer offensive’ launched by the enemy from Russian territory is disappearing,” Syrskyi claimed.

But this is a mixed picture. In recent years, Russian infantry attacks have made progress on the borders of Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Saturday that another village had been taken away.

Ukrainian open source analyst Deepstate asserted that Ukraine “defense continues to collapse rapidly, and the enemy is making significant progress in the region…with significant progress in the ongoing attacks.”

The Kremlin has long insisted that its campaign will continue until it has all the eastern Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. (It already occupies a part of Luhansk.

It will take many years at the current pace. But, as the Trump administration is clearly no longer committed to pushing for ceasefire negotiations, the conflict appears likely to be delayed by the end of the year and in 2026.

Now, the three-dimensional battlefield is an unlikely combination of special operations led by drones and very basic infantry attacks.

At one end of the spectrum, Ukraine’s bold attack on Russian strategic bombers in early June used drones running from trucks deep within Russian territory – the mission took about a dozen aircraft to launch missiles against Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Security Agency reported another drone attack on Saturday that wreaked havoc on Crimea’s Russian air base.

By contrast, Russian soldiers walking and motorcycles (sometimes a dozen or fewer motorcycles) were pushed to abandoned villages in eastern Ukraine, where drones could cover but without armor. This approach is forcing Ukrainian tactics to change: smaller reinforcement positions. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said last week that defense capabilities were masquerading as matching the terrain and allowing smaller people to avoid discovery.

Drone Wars

While infantry defends or occupy territory, drones continue to play a greater role in shaping conflict. The Russians are running out of cheap mass-produced drones, designed to overwhelm air defense and allow some of their missiles to pass. Russians are increasingly using this strategy to combat Ukrainian cities, especially Kyiv, which has suffered considerable damage and higher civilian casualties in recent weeks.

“We have 477 drones in the sky, most of which are Russian-Iranian Shahs, and 60 missiles of all kinds. The Russians are aiming at everything that sustains life,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday.

The Russians use up to 500 (Iran-designed) Shahs a night, combining them with ballistic and cruise missiles – designed to drain our air defense. ”

Zelensky reiterated more Patriot missile batteries and other Western systems, and Trump said last week that the United States should consider it due to large-scale attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Zelensky said Ukraine is preparing to buy Patriots directly or through funds established by the Ukrainian mining agreement.

Both sides produce drones of all types at an astonishing speed. Ukraine’s security department believes Russia is producing nearly 200 Iran-designed Shahed drones every day, with the stock of about 6,000 bead drones in addition to about 6,000 bait drones. According to the Ukrainian military’s general staff, the Russians used more than 23,000 small “Kamikaze” drones on the front line last week.

This is a never-ending competition in design and production. Syrskyi recently said Russia has developed its advantage in fiber-controlled drones, which are more difficult to track and intercept.

Umerov said drone warfare was “a constant intellectual struggle – the enemy often changed the algorithms, and Ukraine responded to the strategy.” “A solution that showed high efficiency at the beginning of the war lost its efficiency as the enemy changed its tactics.”

For its part, Ukraine is strengthening the production of its long-range drones used to attack Russian infrastructure, such as airports, refineries and transportation. Umerov said that in addition to more than four million battlefield drones this year, “thousands” will be produced.

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Both sides continue to build the defense industry so that they can continue to fight – even if Russia’s production scale far exceeds that of Ukraine. Rostec, Russia’s sprawling military conglomerate, estimates that 80% of the equipment targeted at Ukraine.

Its CEO Sergey Chemezov claimed at a meeting with Putin this month that Rostec’s production has risen tenfold since 2021, with revenues growing to $46 billion last year.

But there are dark clouds on the horizon. Russia’s military budget is about 40% of its total expenditure – more than 6% of its GDP. This is inflationary, Putin admitted last week that this year’s growth will be “more modest” to hit price increases. He even suggested that defense spending fall next year.

Maksim Reshetnikov, a senior Russian official who is the Minister of Economic Development, said: “Based on the current business sentiment, we are on the verge of transition to recession, in my opinion.”

Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Russian Central Bank, disagreed with Reshetnikov but warned that financial buffers like the National Reserve Fund were almost exhausted.

“We have to understand that many of these resources have been run out,” she said at the St. Petersburg International Forum.

Putin himself acknowledged the risk, saying that while some experts predicted stagnation, “it was not allowed under any circumstances.”

Although the long-term prognosis for Russia may be frustrating in economic and demographics, it is possible to continue to fund an army of more than 500,000 people in Ukraine or near its borders, and walk a few kilometers here and there. Despite hundreds of thousands of casualties, the Russian army can still produce troops far larger than Ukraine.

Putin said last week: “We have a saying… The footsteps of Russian soldiers are ours, this is our feet, this is our feet.”

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