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Russian forces managed to capture around 68 square miles of Ukraine in April. But it cost them 4,800 vehicles and more than 36,600 dead and wounded troops, according to one statistician who collects data mostly from official Ukrainian sources including the general staff in Kyiv. In the same month, Ukrainian losses were “minimal,” concluded analyst Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting in Poland. Ukraine sprawls across 233,000 square miles, 19% of which is under Russian occupation. At the current rates of advance and loss, the Russians would capture the rest of Ukraine in the year 2256 at the cost of 101...

A terror weapon becomes less terrifying when it doesn’t work. After warning U.S. officials of its intention to launch, Russia lobbed a mysterious new ballistic missile—initially mistaken for a nuclear-capable ICBM—at the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine on the morning of Nov. 21, damaging buildings and injuring dozens of people. The mystery weapon turned out to be a variant of Russia’s RS-26, a 40-ton, solid-fueled missile with six independent reentry vehicles. Its name, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin announced shortly after the strike, is “Oreshnik.” That’s Russian for “hazelnut tree.” Three months later on Thursday morning, the Russians reportedly launched...

When North Korea’s 12,000-strong 11th Army Corps deployed to Kursk Oblast in western Russia to help Russian troops battle an invasion by a powerful Ukrainian force, they brought along anti-tank vehicles, howitzers and rocket launchers. They also brought along a rarely seen air-defense vehicle combining a large wheeled chassis with the radar and missile launchers from a Russian-designed Tor surface-to-air missile vehicle, which normally rides on tracks. The customized North Korean Tor is so unusual that the Russians themselves apparently didn’t recognize it as belonging to their side. On or just before Friday, Russian drones spotted and struck the North...

Something struck a group of Russian troops in Lgov, a town of 21,000 in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, late Sunday or early Monday. “It’s terrible,” a bystander cried. “The guys are all in the bunker,” they added as the bunker burned. A Ukrainian official insinuated the fire was the result of a Ukrainian raid, which would make sense. Lgov lies just 30 miles north of the town of Sudzha, the anchor of the 250-square-mile salient that Ukrainian forces carved out of Kursk back in August. It’s a key road and rail node for troops and supplies supporting the two-month-old Russian...

A four-square-mile patch of Kursk Oblast in western Russia is a graveyard for Russian vehicles—and a harbinger of a looming catastrophe for the Kremlin as its yearlong offensive in Ukraine begins to falter. Kriegsforscher, a Ukrainian marine corps drone operator supporting the 20,000-strong Ukrainian force that has held a 20-by-12-mile salient in Kursk since August, tallied around 90 wrecked and abandoned Russian vehicles just in his two-by-two-mile sector on the northwest edge of the salient. That’s an entire brigade’s worth of vehicles. Ukrainian losses in the same sector have been much lighter: just 20 or so. A four-to-one loss ratio...

In the pre-dawn hours on Tuesday, a large flock of Ukrainian drones winged north from Ukraine all the way to Toropets, a town in western Russian that hosts the 107th Arsenal, a sprawling ammunition dump feeding the Russian force fighting in Ukraine, 300 miles to the south. The arsenal exploded with enough force to register as a small earthquake, draw the attention of NASA fire-spotting satellites and compel local authorities to order an evacuation of nearby residents. A lot of Russian munitions went up in flames. (snip) That so many of Russia’s best munitions were reportedly concentrated in a single...

In a surprise move on Aug. 6, a strong Ukrainian force—eventually numbering around a dozen battalions each with up to 400 troops—breached the defenses along the Russia-Ukraine border adjacent to Russia’s Kursk Oblast. In a heady couple of weeks before the front stabilized, the Ukrainians routed poorly-trained Russian conscripts and captured 400 square miles of Kursk Oblast. “This has put [Russian Pres. Vladimir] Putin under pressure,” U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said. Rightly embarrassed, Putin ordered the Kremlin to recapture Kursk by Oct. 1. And on Wednesday, Russian troops dutifully launched a counterattack along the western edge of the Ukrainian...

As the Ukrainian invasion of Russia grinds into its fifth day, Ukrainian troops have advanced as far as 10 miles into Kursk Oblast—and are beginning to mop up any Russian troops they bypassed in their hurry to extend their zone of control. The Russians, meanwhile, are finally bringing to bear their heaviest firepower—lobbing powerful glide bombs at Ukrainian columns rolling along Russian roads. For more than a year, these glide bombs—each ranging 25 miles or farther with hundreds of pounds of explosives—have been Russia’s most powerful offensive weapons, demolishing Ukrainian defenses ahead of Russian ground assaults. Now they’re defensive weapons—and...

When a combined force of 40,000 Russian troops launched an assault across Ukraine’s northern border with Russia on May 9 – that’s Victory Day, the day Russians celebrate the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II – observers tried to understand the Russians’ aim. Was the goal to drive on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city just 25 miles south of the northern border? Was it to capture a string of border settlements in order to push Ukrainian troops, and their artillery, farther from Russia? Was it to convince the Ukrainians that either of the above was the goal –...

Everyone expected Russia to launch a new offensive in Ukraine on May 9. That’s because May 9 is Victory Day in Russia – the day the country celebrates the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. It’s a symbolic day for a war of choice that’s less about territory or resources than it is about Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s conception of himself as a new Russian emperor lording over a thriving Russian empire. But Putin’s new Russian empire is a farce, albeit a nightmarishly bloody one. And his Victory Day offensive is a farce, too. Less than...

..... Today these drones—hundreds of thousands of them—are the most important systems in the Ukrainian inventory. This means tactical radio jammers, which can block the signals operators use to control their drones, are the most important systems in the Russian inventory. So when Russian tanks began rolling toward the front line with a giant new jammer—actually, clusters of multiple jammers—in recent weeks, Ukrainian drone operators were interested. Very interested. If the new jammers worked, the Ukrainian operators would need to develop countermeasures. Their chance to find out came earlier this month, when a Russian T-72 festooned with jammers ran over...

Russia went to war in Ukraine two years ago with twice as many artillery pieces as Ukraine had. But it isn’t the advantage in howitzers that really matters – it’s the advantage in shells. The Czechs found, for Ukraine, nearly a million shells precisely when Ukraine needed those million shells the most: at the peak of Russia’s winter offensive. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Czech artillery initiative probably saved entire Ukrainian cities, by giving the Ukrainian army the firepower to resist a much bigger Russian army. It’s no secret how Ukraine got into an artillery bind late...

Russia went to war in Ukraine in February 2022 with no more than nine flyable Beriev A-50U/M radar planes, which extend sensor coverage over the front line. The four-engine A-50s and the 10 or 15 experienced officers who crew each of them are critical and hard-to-replace assets. Which is why the Ukrainians have devoted scarce resources to finding and striking the $300-million planes. A Ukrainian drone damaged an A-50 on the ground in Belarus last year. On Jan. 14, a long-range Ukrainian missile shot down an A-50 over the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine. Six weeks later on Feb....

It’s reckless, if not insane, to deploy an open-top, unarmored all-terrain vehicle—in essence, a heavy-duty golf cart—in combat just a quarter mile from the front line. But two years into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Russian commanders are at least reckless if not not insane. Apparently this weekend, a Russian unit—possibly the 488th Motor Rifle Regiment—attacked positions held by the Ukrainian 60th Mechanized Brigade in Yampolivka, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. A Russian column including what appeared to be MT-LB armored tractors and at least one T-90 tank motored west toward Yampolivka. That itself wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was...

The Russian air force lost another Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber on Thursday, the Ukrainian air force claimed. If confirmed, the Thursday shoot-down would extend an unprecedented hot streak for Ukrainian air-defenses. The Ukrainian claim they’ve shot down 11 Russian planes in 11 days: eight Su-34s, two Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane. But those 11 claimed losses are worse than they might seem for the increasingly stressed Russian air force. In theory, the air arm has plenty more planes. In practice, the service is dangerously close to collapse.

The Ukrainian air force claimed it has shot down 10 Russian warplanes in 10 days: nine of the Russian air force’s best Sukhoi Su-34 and Sukhoi Su-35 fighter-bombers and also a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane. -snip- The Ukrainian defense ministry announced this month’s ninth and tenth shoot-downs—both involving Su-34s—on Tuesday. “Oops, we did it again!” the ministry quipped. “And now it's 10 destroyed Russian planes in 10 days!” How the Ukrainians are shooting down so many jets is unclear. It’s possible the Ukrainian air force has assigned some of its American-made Patriot missile launchers to mobile air-defense groups that...

The 104th Air Assault Division was supposed to save the Russian campaign on the left bank of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. Instead, the newly-formed division “suffered exceptionally heavy losses and failed to achieve its objectives during its combat debut,” the U.K. Defense Ministry reported. Two months ago, Ukrainian marines from the 35th Brigade motored across the Dnipro and, under the cover of artillery, drones and intensive radio-jamming, secured a bridgehead in the settlement of Krynky on the otherwise Russian-held left bank. It’s a new front in the war—one the Ukrainians hope eventually to exploit in order to push...

Russia’s winter offensive is grinding to a bloody halt in the ruins of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Yes, the Russians have occupied most of the devastated city. But it’s cost them thousands of their best troops. Having defeated the Russian offensive without committing its 20 or so newly-raised brigades, Ukraine is poised to launch a counteroffensive—perhaps as soon as the spring mud finally dries up. If there’s a big potential spoiler, it’s the Russian air force. For most of the first 14 months of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Soviet-vintage Ukrainian air-defenses have kept at bay Russia’s hundreds...

The Russian army is welding 80-year-old gun mounts, originally built to arm patrol boats, onto 70-year-old armored tractors—and sending them to Ukraine to get captured by the Ukrainian army. The up-gunned, tracked MT-LBs are further evidence of the Kremlin’s worsening equipment crisis as it struggles to make good its losses in Ukraine. Which is why the Kremlin is pulling out of long-term storage hundreds of 50-year-old T-62 tanks, 60-year-old BMP-1 fighting vehicles and 70-year-old BTR-50P armored tractors. These awkwardly up-gunned MT-LBs just further underscore the Russians’ growing desperation.

There are just two roads out of Bakhmut for Ukrainian troops. Russian forces are within rocket range of both of them. And that means that, after nine months of brutal fighting, the battle for Bakhmut is entering what could be its decisive phase. In the coming hours or days, it’s possible one of two things will happen. The Russians advance so close to the two roads that the Ukrainians retreat in order to avoid encirclement. Or the Ukrainians counterattack and push back the Russians. The former would resolve the long, awful fight over Bakhmut. The latter would prolong it. In...